Helios

TWENTY-NINE

They couldn’t stay. That much was obvious.

Five minutes had passed since the last burst of light, and there had been no more shooting. Pierce was pretty sure the gunmen were either dead — flash-cooked — or blinded to the point of incapacitation. Either way, they were a secondary concern. Priority One was getting out of the cave and off the mountain, while attracting as little attention as possible.

Fiona presented an additional compelling reason for a hasty exit. “I think the cows—”

“Shekinah,” Pierce said.

“Whatevs. I think they’re attracted to the orb. I mean like a magnetic attraction. I tried to use it to shoo them away, but as long as we’re here, they’re going to stick around.”

“And if we leave?” Gallo asked. “Will they follow us to the ends of the Earth, or just keep wandering around killing anyone who looks at them cross-eyed?”

Fiona returned a helpless shrug.

“If they are what I think they are,” Pierce said. “They’ll return to a dormant state as soon as we’re out of here.”

“Shekinah,” Gallo murmured. “The glory of God. According to kabbalists, it’s the feminine expression of God’s divinity. And cows are female.”

“Well, yes, but that’s not what I mean. Fiona is right. The creatures are some kind of mobile energy storage vessels for the Originators. When they left…or died out…the creatures went into sleep mode, until Moses showed up and found some kind of control device left behind by the Originators. Probably something made out of memory metal like the orb. Maybe it’s what inspired the legend of the sun chariot. While Moses held onto it, he could control the shekinahs. Use them to do stuff that must have seemed like the power of God.”

“The Plagues,” Gallo supplied. “And parting the Red Sea. That’s more than a little blasphemous. And it doesn’t consider the possibility that maybe the Originators didn’t create any of this. Maybe they simply found it first.”

“Unlikely.”

“How’s the saying go? God works in mysterious ways.” She smiled, knowing the statement would irk him, and then added. “Is anything about all this likely?”

Pierce conceded the point with a subtle nod. “But I’m going to run with my theory until proven wrong. Now, the ninth plague was three days — seventy-two straight hours — of total darkness, which the Egyptians would have seen as a direct attack against Ra, the sun god.”

“Three days of darkness. A solar event?”

“I think so. If our assumptions about the Black Knight are correct, he must have used it to redirect sunlight away from that part of the Earth.”

“Wouldn’t that have caused earthquakes like it did today?” Fiona asked.

“It very well may have. Or worse. Some scholars have theorized that the true cause of the Plagues was a coincidental eruption of the Thera volcano, but what if it’s the other way around? What if that solar event triggered the volcano?”

“Which in turn caused the parting of the Red Sea.”

Pierce spread his hands. “It all fits. After the Exodus, Moses came back here where he had the Ark made, a golden chest topped with cherubs—”

“We’ve all seen the movie with you, George,” Gallo said with a wry smile. “Many times.”

Pierce grinned. After seeing that movie the first time, he had become obsessed with Ark lore, researching all the stories of what it was and what became of it, searching for it, if only in his daydreams. “Well you know the power that was released at the end of the movie to melt Nazi faces? That was a real thing, and they called it shekinah. The Ark was so dangerous that it had to be kept in a special tent, the Tabernacle of Meeting. It was made of heavy fabric woven with gold fibers. The lid with the angels was called the Mercy Seat, and when it was in the Tabernacle, it radiated light — shekinah. No one but the high priest was allowed to see the Ark, and even then, only once a year. They had to tie a rope to his foot so that if he died, they could drag his body out. When moving the Ark, they kept it covered at all times, with a blanket made out of the same fabric. No one was ever permitted to touch it. Several centuries later, during the reign of King David, the Ark was being moved by wagon. One of David’s men inadvertently touched it and died. Some fringe archaeologists have speculated that it might have been a sort of primitive battery, but I think it was a lot more than that.”

Fiona’s eyes widened in understanding. “Moses put one of the cows in it.”

“No…I mean, yes, he did that, but there’s more to it. I think he put the Originator artifact in it. He created the Ark to be the master control device for the entire Originator power system.”

Gallo raised an eyebrow. “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“Forty years after the Exodus, when Moses’s successor Yeshua ben Nun — Joshua — led the Israelite army into Palestine, the priests carried the Ark ahead of the army. When they walked into the Jordan River, the waters parted, just like at the Red Sea — and maybe just like Fi did at Arkaim — so that the army could ford the river. In the first battle, the power in the Ark leveled the city walls of Jericho. Later, during the battle of Gideon, the Bible says that God hurled stones from heaven to slay the enemy — some kind of gravitational anomaly maybe — and when the enemy forces tried to escape, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still in the sky, which it did for a full twenty-four hours.”

“So Joshua did the same thing Fallon did. Another solar event.”

“Possibly the same one that inspired the Phaethon legend and Fiona’s story of Raven stealing the sun. There’s one more solar event mentioned in the Bible. A minor one. During the reign of King Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah caused the shadow on a sundial to turn backward ten degrees.”

Gallo folded her arms across her chest. “So the Ark and the Plagues and everything else… All miracles of the Bible… The foundation of the religious beliefs of half the world’s population… It’s all hogwash? An alien artifact pretending to be God?”

“Well…” Pierce shrugged.

“Bullshit,” Gallo said. “You’re a smart guy, but your narrow worldview tends to skew your perspective. You look for explanations without considering that the supernatural might be real. You’re willing to believe in the most outlandish theories I’ve ever heard, unless believing means changing the way you live your life. Everything that you’ve said fits, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the ‘Originators’ were from another planet, dimension, or time.”

“You think the Originators were supernatural?” Fiona asked. “Like angels?”

“Or demons,” Gallo said. “We know the Originators were viewed as giants. We know they played with genetics. We know they crossbred with humanity. All of these elements fit with the Biblical story of—”

“The Nephilim,” George said.

“The Nephi-what now?” Fiona asked.

“Nephilim,” George repeated. “The product of demons mating with human women. They’re recorded in the Bible, and other texts around the world, as ‘men of renown.’ Giants. Like demi-gods, far more advanced than mankind at the time.”

“Many scholars who believe the Nephilim story,” Gallo started, “also believe the inhabitants of Jericho were Nephilim. Joshua’s scouts reported that they were as grasshoppers in the sight of the people who lived there. So if the technology used to destroy the city was the same as Moses used to part the sea and rain down plagues on Egypt, perhaps its origin is more supernatural than alien. The fight between science and religion, and the hostility some people have toward religion—” She cleared her throat while looking at George. “—has never made sense to me. How could a God who created the universe and the scientific laws that allow it to function, not use science to carry out his plans?”

George was quiet for a moment, in part because he was surprised by Gallo’s strident point of view, but also because it made sense. While he didn’t consider himself hostile to religion, he did tend to categorize it as fiction. But he had seen things that could only be described as miraculous, and Fiona was learning to speak the language of God. At first, he thought the language discounted the stories of Moses and Jesus. They were just guys who spoke the language. But how could a shepherd and a carpenter learn the language of God? And why wouldn’t they have used it to improve their lives? Moses wandered the desert for forty years and never set foot in his Promised Land. Jesus was crucified. If they’d had access to the Mother Tongue, or the Ark’s power source, why didn’t they use those things to change the world?

He smiled at himself.

They had changed the world. But not like a human being would have. “I concede the point. The Originators could be supernatural. Angels, demons, Nephilim. I can’t discount anything, and I don’t have all the answers. But for the sake of making sense of all this, I’m going to work through it in a way that’s easier for me to grasp.”

Gallo smiled and turned to Fiona. “This is why men need women willing to challenge their point of view. Makes them more well-rounded.”

“Anyway…” George said, trying to suppress his smile. Gallo held the keys to his heart and his mind, and she knew it. “…what I’m getting at is that Moses and the Israelites left with the Ark, but the shekinahs—”

“That’s a dumb name,” Fiona said.

Pierce smiled. “The important thing is that Joshua triggered the solar event, and he didn’t have a transmitter array or any special knowledge—”

“That we know of,” Gallo put in.

“That tells me that the Ark is some kind of user-friendly control interface. Maybe Moses taught Joshua a few words in the Mother Tongue, or maybe it responds to psychic intentions. Either way, we can use it the same way. Turn off the Black Knight. Maybe even make it self-destruct, so this can never happen again.”

“You really think you can find the Ark?”

“I think we have to. It’s the only way to guarantee that Fallon or someone like him doesn’t trigger another solar event. Fi, do you think you could make a golem to keep the cows away from us?”

Fiona considered the question for a moment. “Maybe. It doesn’t take much to set them off, but I’ve got an idea. Do you think it’s a good idea to leave them here?”

Pierce nodded. “Once we leave, put some distance between them and that sphere, they’ll melt back into the ground, just like they did when Moses left three thousand years ago.”

“What about the guys with guns?” Gallo asked.

“I think I can deal with them, too,” Fiona promised.

“They’re probably already gone.” Pierce nodded to Fiona. “Do it.”

The young woman moved to the mouth of the cave and shone her headlamp down at the piled rocks at the base of the cliff. She murmured the emet command, and then, with a loud rumble like another small tremor, the rocks began to move. Thousands of small pieces and a flurry of sand came together like iron filings around a magnet, forming a towering colossal figure that reached as high as the cave opening. Unlike the other golems Pierce had seen her create, this one was not humanoid. Despite its rough composition, he had no trouble distinguishing the shape of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Gallo grinned and laid on the sarcasm. “Definitely nothing supernatural about that.”

Fiona allowed herself a slight smile, but the crease of her forehead showed her intense concentration. The golem began moving away, shaking the ground with each ponderous step. Fiona followed it with the beam of her headlamp, but after just a few steps, she turned around. “You guys should probably look away.”

There was a faint flash of light, nowhere near as brilliant as what they had earlier experienced. Then he heard Fiona cry out.

“Fi?” Pierce whirled around and found her picking herself up off the cavern floor, trembling.

“That doesn’t usually happen,” she said.

“What? What happened?”

“Feedback. Felt like an electric shock, but I’ll be okay.” She stood up, shook herself, and managed a wan smile. “Rexie went all to pieces, though. One golem per cow, I guess.”

“You’re not doing that again,” Pierce declared. “We’ll just have to make a run for it.”

The fact that she didn’t protest told him that she was trying to downplay the severity of the jolt.

Pierce peered down at the base of the cliff, and was dismayed to see two of the shekinah creatures milling about nearby. They weren’t circling like predators. In fact, they were barely moving at all.

He took a deep breath, and then began the descent, facing the wall as he made his way down the irregular steps the way he might climb down a ladder. Every few steps, he glanced down, making sure that the beasts were keeping their distance. As soon as he was back on the grade, he waved for the others to follow, then returned his attention to the shekinah creatures. There was no indication that they were even aware of his presence. They ignored Gallo’s arrival as well, but when Fiona emerged from the cave, the reaction was unmistakable. In unison, the creatures began shuffling toward them. Pierce felt the first tickle of static electricity on his face.

He shone his light away from the creatures and started forward as fast as the loose terrain would allow. A shekinah appeared ahead, trundling toward them on a slow but obvious intercept course. Pierce shifted away from it, but he was stopped after just a few steps by a gaping fissure. The shekinah now blocked their retreat, forcing them to continue along the edge of the fissure, but then another creature came into view in that direction.

Pierce skidded to a stop and searched for another route. The fissure was too wide to leap across, which left only climbing back up the slope, a move that would leave them pinned against the cliff face.

He heard Fiona speak, but it took him a second to realize what she was saying. “Versatu elid vas re’eish clom, emet.”

“Fi, no!”

Even as he said it, he felt the ground tremble as a newly formed golem began moving toward the strange creatures. Pierce saw it in the light of his headlamp, a giant T. Rex composed of sand and loose rock, closing on the creature pursuing them. Its massive jaws opened and then came down over the misshapen shekinah.

“Don’t look!” Fiona shouted.

Pierce was already turning away, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the golem envelop the smaller creature. There was a harsh tearing noise, and Pierce could feel electricity cracking all over his body, but the golem’s body shielded them all from the worst effects. Some light rays seeped through the cracks between the loosely joined rocks comprising the earthen creation, leaving a few streaks across Pierce’s vision. But it wasn’t even as bright as a camera flash. As the golem crumbled, Fiona collapsed like an unstrung puppet.

Pierce scooped the fallen girl up in his arms, over her weak protest, and with Gallo beside him, he started back the way they had come. The rubble left from the golem’s disintegration made for a precarious crossing, but once past the worst of it, Pierce picked up the pace. His lungs burned from altitude and exertion, and his legs felt like molten lead, but the sight of more shekinahs closing in on them supplied a burst of adrenaline that left him both numb to the pain and energized.

“I can walk,’ Fiona mumbled. Pierce ignored her, but then she whispered one more word. “Emet.”

“Damn it, Fi!”

He felt a rumble rising up through his boot soles as the rubble pile behind them coalesced into another golem, and he had to slow almost to a stop as the construct lumbered past on an intercept course with the shekinahs. Pierce caught only a glimpse of the golem — not a dinosaur this time, but a crude humanoid form — before he heard Fiona’s voice again. “Met.”

The golem crumbled into a heap right in front of the shekinah creatures, blocking their approach, and buying the three of them a few extra seconds to maneuver.

All Pierce could think to say was: “Good thinking.”

“I can walk,” Fiona said again, and this time, Pierce took her word for it.

THIRTY

With Fiona using the golems to block the creatures instead of destroying them, they reached the monastery walls without triggering any further radiant bursts. The gunmen were also absent, but Pierce remained wary as they made their way around the monastery. The garden area on the opposite side of the complex had been transformed into a triage site, with emergency workers and monks ministering to the wounded.

“I hope Father Justin made it,” Fiona said.

Pierce nodded. “Right now, the best thing we can do for him and all the survivors is to get as far away from here as we can.”

“How far is that?” Gallo asked.

“We’ll just keep moving,” Pierce said.

They slipped past the casualty collection point and made their way down the road to the tourist village, also named for Saint Catherine. The hotels were full of visitors who, following both the earthquakes and the rumors of a terrorist attack at the nearby monastery, were waiting to be evacuated by bus to Sharm el-Sheikh. After a few inquiries, Pierce found a local taxi driver willing to make the road trip, for quadruple the normal fare — a very competitive rate given the circumstances, he was assured — and they were soon underway again.

As the hired car raced down the desert roads, Pierce called Dourado and learned of the debacle in Geneva, and the worldwide consequences.

There had indeed been another spate of earthquakes in the western hemisphere. In an ironic reversal, earthquake-prone California had experienced only mild shocks, nothing above magnitude 5.0. But further to the north, the pent-up energy of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, had been released in a massive six-minute-long quake measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale. The entire northwest coast of Oregon and Washington had gone silent. The predictions emerging from scientists and news agencies were ominous. Portland, Seattle, and everything west of Interstate 5 had been devastated by the temblor and the subsequent tsunami. Alaska had been hit with the most destructive temblor since the 1964 Good Friday earthquake that had leveled Anchorage. Hawaii and Japan were bracing for tsunamis that would, in all likelihood, dwarf the disastrous effects of the 2011 Fukushima quake.

That the seismic disturbances had been a long time coming — historically, a ‘Big One’ hit the region every 300–600 years, and the last one had occurred in 1700—didn’t make the news any easier to swallow. Carter was a Seattle native, and Fiona’s ancestral home was just a few miles inland on the Oregon Coast. It would be hours, possibly even days, before the true extent of the damage was known. But even the most optimistic predictions were dire.

Yet as terrible as the news was, Pierce knew it was only a shadow of the danger that still loomed on the horizon.

Following the showdown with the renegade robots, the team had regrouped and set up an ad hoc command center at Tomorrowland. Despite his frustration, Pierce knew that the misguided attempt to ‘fix’ the Black Knight had been the right decision, given the circumstances. At least now they knew who was responsible for the global threat.

Ishiro Tanaka.

Pierce put the phone on speaker mode, as Dourado began relating what she had discovered about the Japanese physicist.

The grandson of a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Tanaka had, from an early age, shown a macabre fascination with the destructive forces at work in the universe. Later in life, as a university student, he had become an active and vocal proponent of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement — VHEMT, pronounced ‘Vehement’. They were a group that espoused the belief that humans were a virulent disease and would destroy all life on Earth if they were not themselves made extinct. It was a goal they believed could be accomplished peacefully through anti-natalism — the end of human procreation.

“Vehement wasn’t radical enough for him,” Dourado explained, “But he became friends with an Indian student named Bandar Pradesh—”

“Bandar Pradesh?” Gallo broke in. “That’s not a real Indian name.”

“I know, right? Bandar literally means ‘port’ and Pradesh means ‘province.’ It’s probably an alias or some kind of inside joke. He preferred to go by his hacker name: Shiva. Pradesh or Shiva or whatever you want to call him, took the whole humans-are-a-disease thing one step further. He believed that all life — from microbes to redwood trees to blue whales — was a great big cosmic mistake.”

“Huh?”

Carter broke in. “It’s the philosophy of pessimism.”

“Like Rust, in True Detective,” Dourado supplied.

“I was thinking more along the lines of Schopenhauer,” Carter said. “Death gets us all in the end. Everything we do only leads to suffering, either for ourselves or someone else. Entropy will eventually destroy the universe no matter what we do, and since life is pretty much miserable for most creatures, eradicating life from the universe is a merciful act, sparing future generations from pain and suffering.”

“That’s dark,” Pierce said.

“Geniuses are a little more susceptible to philosophies like that, because they want to understand the big picture and think everything should make sense like a balanced equation. They end up getting scared by what they see.”

“Tanaka and Shiva stayed friends,” Dourado continued. “And continued to be pessi-bros or whatever. Tanaka worked at HAARP for a while, and then joined Pradesh at a place called Jovian Technologies, but then Shiva disappeared during the Blackout incident in Paris a few years ago.”

“I remember that,” Fiona said with a groan.

“Tanaka was pretty quiet after that,” Dourado continued, “Stopped posting on the Vehement forums and focused on his work.”

“Unfortunately,” said a new, unfamiliar male voice, “his work was helping me figure out how to turn the Black Knight satellite into a planetary-scale solar reflector.”

Marcus Fallon, Pierce thought. The boy who couldn’t resist playing with fire.

“So that’s all he wants? Global annihilation? No negotiation?”

“Seems that way,” Dourado answered.

“Do we know where he’s going?”

“Not a clue. He could be anywhere. All he needs is an antenna array with a 10 gigahertz transmitter, and he can stop the sun.”

“What about the men who attacked the monastery? Were they working with him?”

“Given the timing of the attack, I think that’s a safe assumption. Tanaka has been building his doomsday network for a long time, and thanks to the Internet and his Vehement connections, it’s worldwide.”

Gallo shook her head. “Who knew there were so many people out there rooting for the end of the world?”

“There are a lot of them, and they don’t care if they live or die.”

“Well, they’re all going to be disappointed when we shut down the Black Knight. Permanently.”

Dourado let out a cheer and in a gruff voice said, “Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”

Carter was a little more subdued. “You found the sun chariot?”

“Not exactly.” He recounted their misadventure with the shekinah creatures and the revelation in the Cave of Moses. Dourado interrupted only once with the cryptic pronouncement, “So there is a cow level.”

Pierce assumed it was a pop culture reference. Dourado made a lot of those.

“The Ark of the Covenant,” Fallon mused. “It’s a real thing?”

For the first time since making the call, it occurred to Pierce that he was being a little too free with information. “That’s right,” he said.

“And it’s an artifact from the same aliens that made the Black Knight?”

Fallon was quick, and well-informed. He also knew more about the meta-material than any of them. Okay, Pierce thought. Time to extend a little trust. I just hope this doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

“Tanaka has the Roswell fragment, and I think we know what he plans to do with it. Unfortunately, since we don’t know where he’s going to do it from, finding the Ark and using it to shut down the Black Knight is our best option.”

“We don’t have much time,” Fallon pointed out. “Do you know where it is? In the movie, it was in Egypt. But then they took it to Area 51. Is that where it is?”

“No. Though it pains me to say, that was just a movie. And the premise was flawed. According to the movie, the Pharaoh Shishak — or Shoshenq — took the Ark when he raided the Temple of Solomon in 980 B.C.E. The raid actually happened, but Shoshenq didn’t get the Ark. It’s mentioned again in the Bible record during the reign of King Josiah more than three hundred years later.”

Carter spoke up again. “The Ark is in Ethiopia. In a chapel in Axum.”

Pierce smiled to himself. “That’s one of many rumored locations. There are so many different Ark stories, it’s no wonder it’s never been found. The Ethiopian legend is based on a Bible reference about the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon. Two thousand-odd years later, the Christian emperor of Ethiopia built on that story to legitimize his right to rule. According to this new version, Sheba was another name for Ethiopia. Solomon secretly married the Queen and she bore him a son, Menelik, the first emperor and progenitor of the Menelik dynasty, which supposedly endured until 1975. Solomon entrusted the Ark to Menelik, who bore it away secretly to Sheba, where it has been ever since.” He shook his head. “It’s a pretty fanciful story, concocted for political reasons.

“For my money, the most plausible story is recorded in the Second Book of Maccabees. Shortly before the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and carried all the Jews off into exile, the prophet Jeremiah was ordered by God to take the Ark and the Tabernacle and hide them in a cave on Mount Nebo, the place where Moses died. He shut the cave up and never told anyone its location, promising that it would only be revealed when God gathered his people together again and showed them mercy.

“Jeremiah was the son of a Kohen, a Levite priest descended from Moses’s brother Aaron, and incidentally the derivation of the modern Jewish name Cohen. The Bible account is very explicit about the fact that only a Kohen could safely enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and approach the Ark. To me, that weighs in favor of Jeremiah being the one to relocate the Ark.”

When no one raised an objection, Pierce went on. “Mount Nebo is in modern-day Jordan, but there’s some disagreement about whether that identification is accurate. Judging by the fact that nobody’s found the Ark in the last twenty-six-hundred years, I’m guessing it’s not.

“Cintia, head back to Rome and start digging in the archives. See if you can give us a better search area. We’ll head on to Amman and get in position.”

“What about me and Erik?” Carter asked.

“Do what you can to help Cintia.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Lazarus said, speaking for the first time. “I should have been there with you.”

“From what Cintia’s told me,” Pierce countered, “It’s a good thing you weren’t.”

“All the same, I’m no use to anyone staying in the rear with the gear.”

Pierce weighed the offer a moment. As much as he would have liked to have the big man with him, looking out for them, there really wasn’t a need for additional protection. With Tanaka’s deception exposed, the security leak that had led the gunmen to them in Sinai was plugged. Besides, Tanaka would almost certainly shift his resources to the matter of finding another transmitter and guarding it. Finding the Ark was going to require actual archaeology — solving an age old mystery and digging in the ground — not the brawling, gun-toting, tomb-raiding of an Indiana Jones.

“I appreciate it,” Pierce said, “But I’m hoping we’ll have this wrapped up in a few hours. Stay with Felice.”

Lazarus didn’t press the issue, and it occurred to Pierce that his last statement might have been misinterpreted. He had meant to imply that Carter might be in need of comfort in the wake of the devastating news out of the Northwest, but perhaps the big man had understood it to mean something else.

Stay with Felice so that you’ll be together when the end comes.

If he failed to find the Ark, to solve a mystery that had confounded searchers for more than two thousand years, it just might come to that.

“You know, on second thought, if the Ark isn’t at Mount Nebo, we’re going to be back to square one. We need to cover our bases. Erik, you and Felice head to Ethiopia and check out the church in Axum. If we both strike out, at least we’ll have crossed two possibilities off the list.”

He tried to sound upbeat when giving them the assignment. It was busy-work, giving them something to do so they wouldn’t feel useless. The odds of the Ark being in Ethiopia were about a billion-to-one. However, as he had once pointed out to a certain cheerleader who had given him similar odds of ever going out with him, a billion-to-one meant there was still a chance.

“On it,” Lazarus said.

“What about me?” Fallon asked. “What can I do?”

Pierce resisted the impulse to tell Fallon that he had done quite enough. He settled for something only slightly more diplomatic. “We’ve got this under control, and I’m sure you’ve got some house cleaning to do. If the world doesn’t end, you’ll know we succeeded.”

THIRTY-ONE

A car was waiting for Tanaka at the front entrance to Tomorrowland. He did not recognize the driver, but that was not unexpected. The Children of Durga were many, but scattered far and wide, separated not only by physical geography, but also by culture and faith.

Not all of Durga’s children recognized their mother, but they did share a common unifying vision: a belief that the end of the world was not merely imminent, but urgently needed. For some, the end would bring a Rapture of the faithful or entry into a paradisiac afterlife. Others believed that destruction was a necessary part of the phoenix-like cycle of rebirth, and that a cleansed planet would bring about a new and better age. Only a few shared the true vision of Durga: the enlightened knowledge that life was a bitter joke from a cruel universe.

Tanaka didn’t know Durga’s true identity. No one did, though Tanaka thought Shiva might have. But while the two of them had shared a bond far deeper than mere friendship, Shiva had only hinted at the depths of his relationship with Durga.

Although born in India, a land immersed in Hindu mythology, Shiva had not chosen his alias for religious reasons. Shiva is the consort of Durga, he had explained to Tanaka. The mahashakti, the form and formless, the root cause of creation, preservation, and annihilation.

Tanaka had understood that was not meant to be interpreted literally, but it suggested a very intimate relationship between the young man — who had been an orphan and an outcast — and the mysterious leader of their cause. Durga might have been a parental figure, the person who lifted young Shiva up out of poverty and set him on the path. Or perhaps a former lover. Or both. Although Durga was a form of the Goddess in Hinduism, that did not mean the person behind that alias was female.

Shiva was gone now, but the cause remained. Durga remained, and had made direct contact with him in the weeks following Shiva’s disappearance.

Aside from Shiva, a true Child of the Goddess, Tanaka had never met another follower in person, but that did not matter. Their unity of purpose found its truest expression in the virtual world, where they could share ideas unburdened by the limitations and animal urges of physical bodies.

However, there was only so much that could be accomplished on Internet forums and chat rooms. Misery and suffering existed in the real world, so the Annihilation, the Great Victory of Durga, the end of death itself, could only be accomplished there. Tanaka would be the instrument of Durga’s victory.

Security was also a concern. Compartmentalization and anonymity ensured that only a few knew the full scope and purpose of the plan, and this was of particular concern as the plan came to fruition.

The driver did not know who Tanaka was or that he carried the Roswell meta-material, nor did he know with certainty that the recent earthquakes were the beginning of the end. He might be Christian or Muslim, or something else altogether. All he would have been told was to pick someone up outside the gates of Tomorrowland and to do whatever that person instructed.

And one other thing. He handed Tanaka a throwaway mobile phone.

Tanaka opened the message center and read the only entry there, an anonymous text sent only a few minutes earlier. No words. Just a single question mark.

A message from Durga.

He typed out a reply.

A few seconds passed, and then a new message appeared.

Before he could reply, another text arrived.

Tanaka took the news like a physical blow. He had passed along the information about George Pierce’s search for an ancient relic with a possible connection to the Black Knight, but he had not really considered it to be much of a threat to their endeavor. Durga felt differently, and judging by the outcome, the concern appeared warranted.

Tanaka started typing in a response, deleted it, started again and then deleted that, too. When he had slipped away from the transmitter building, Fallon had been unconscious and the three visitors were all in mortal danger. If everything had gone according to plan, all four were now dead, but if he had learned anything from the day’s activity, it was that things did not always go according to plan. Proclaiming victory would be premature, but if he equivocated without good reason, the entire endeavor might be derailed. He settled on a compromise that seemed workable.

There was a pause, then another text appeared.

“Stop the car,” Tanaka said, as soon as he read the message.

The driver pulled to the side of the road.

“Go back. You’re supposed to keep watch at Tomorrowland.”

The man glanced over and frowned. “Just me?”

“I have work to do elsewhere.”

“And…you’re taking my car?”

Tanaka almost laughed aloud. “I’ll leave your car at the airport.”

The man was not pleased about surrendering his personal vehicle to the cause. It was easy to be a true believer on the Internet. Sacrificing material possessions in the real world was a lot harder.

“Trust me,” Tanaka went on. “Very soon, you won’t need a car or anything else, ever again.”

THIRTY-TWO

For a long time, Abdul-Ahad did not move. He felt exhausted, completely drained. He could not see a thing. His entire body felt numb, the nerve endings in his skin overloaded. It was as if the pure light unleashed with the destruction of the jinn had bleached him to the bone.

But he was still alive.

At first, the realization had filled him with despair. Had he been wrong about attacking the jinn? Was that why he had been denied entry into Paradise with the others? But as he lay there, blind, numb, and helpless, he realized why he was still alive.

His ears worked just fine, but for a long time, all he could hear was the soft crunch of jinn roaming about on the mountain slope, and much fainter, the cries of alarm rising from the monastery. Then, he heard voices, speaking English.

The agents of the anti-messiah were still alive.

There was nothing he could do to stop them, not in his current condition, and not by himself. But there were other ways to fight.

Israfil must be told, he thought.

God was not finished with him. There was work yet to do.

THIRTY-THREE

“The Lost Ark,” Marcus Fallon shook his head in disbelief, as the conference call ended. “Well, I guess it isn’t any crazier than the idea of using an alien artifact to shut down the sun. Or are the two connected? I can’t keep it all straight. Is this all for real?”

Carter stared at him, but it was the pink-haired woman, Dourado, who answered. “If Dr. Pierce says it is, believe it.”

She turned away, as if the matter warranted no further consideration and began discussing travel plans with Carter, while the big man, Lazarus, looked on, saying nothing.

Fallon felt like the odd man out, a stranger in his own home. They were done with him. He was of no further use, and they didn’t seem to care if he knew it.

He was a little surprised, and not in a good way, at the audacity they had demonstrated thus far, moving into Tomorrowland like a military strike force, destroying his property, commandeering his computers. While it was true that he was partly to blame for the mess, that didn’t excuse their rudeness.

We’ll just see about that, he thought.

“So what happens next? I mean, once Pierce finds the Ark?”

Carter looked up again. “You heard him. Shut the Black Knight down and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“That’s not acceptable.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Black Knight is the key to breaking free of the Earth, colonizing other planets. You don’t just throw an opportunity like that away.”

Carter shook her head. “Maybe you’ve forgotten already, but the Pacific Coast is underwater. The world is in shambles, and that would be true even without Tanaka trying to send us all to Hell. That’s where your opportunity has gotten us.”

“Sure, there were mistakes,” he said, “but that’s no reason to burn all the progress we’ve made. If the Ark is the key to controlling the Black Knight, then we need to do more research with it.”

“You mean you need to do more research,” Lazarus said, in a low voice that sounded more than a little threatening.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve already laid the groundwork. Invested millions. If Tanaka hadn’t gone bat-shit crazy, I would already be on my way to working out the kinks. I deserve a piece of this.”

Carter continued to regard him with cool indifference. “I guess you could make a legal case for that. Of course, you would have to admit some responsibility for these disasters. And make the case that you could behave responsibly with it.” She shook her head. “I know you mean well, Marcus, but you know what will happen if you try to move forward with your research. Someone will turn it into a weapon, just like what Tanaka wants to do.”

Not if I turn it into a weapon first, Fallon thought.

And why not? If he controlled the Black Knight, he would own the sun.

He managed a smile of resignation and let the matter drop. Maybe they were done with him, but he wasn’t done with them.

THIRTY-FOUR

“I can’t believe they called this ‘the Promised Land.’” Fiona waved a hand at the panoramic vista spread out before them. From the 2,800-foot-tall ridge overlooking the Jordan River Valley, she could see all the way to Jerusalem, but although there were a few patches of green here and there, and a sparkling blue gem that was the Dead Sea, the landscape was, for the most part, desolate desert.

“It looked very different three thousand years ago,” Gallo said. “Remember, this is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions on Earth.”

“Inhabited and contested,” Pierce added. “People have been fighting over this real estate through all of recorded history.”

“Yeah, it’s got kind of a lived-in look,” Fiona agreed. She dropped her gaze to the large metal plaque that showed the direction and distance of several important locations, some of which Fiona recognized — Jerusalem and Bethlehem — and some which sounded familiar. “Qumran?”

“The location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found,” Pierce said.

“Oh.” Fiona turned away from the scenic view. Off to her left stood the reconstructed Byzantine church, called the Basilica of Moses, the ruins of which had been discovered in the 1930s. The structure reminded her of the St. Catherine’s Monastery, and that made her think about Father Justin, which in turn made her feel like crying. So she turned away from it as well, looking instead to the parking area, which was crowded full of cars and buses. Tourists were snapping selfies with the Holy Land in the background.

Pilgrimage, twenty-first century style.

While the world was still trying to restore some semblance of order following the unprecedented global earthquakes, tourism in the Holy Lands was continuing apace. Instead of canceling their plans and heading home, visitors to the region seemed energized by the possibility that the long-anticipated End Times were about to reach their climax. One such vacationer had explained to Fiona how the Book of Revelation foretold a great earthquake and a time of darkness upon the Earth, just before the End.

Fiona found the prophecy more than a little disquieting. It was probably just a coincidence, but what if it wasn’t? She had tapped into some kind of universal knowledge under Arkaim. Maybe all those prophets in the Bible had tuned into the same thing? Maybe whatever was about to happen with the Black Knight was so profound that it sent ripples back through time? Or maybe someone — God, or the Originators, or whoever — had known what might happen, and sent those visions and prophecies as a warning?

Thinking about it made her head hurt, especially since she was already feeling tired and a little cranky after traveling too many miles and getting too little sleep. Twenty-four hours earlier she had been in Russia, preparing for an excursion into the tunnel labyrinth beneath Arkaim. Twelve hours prior — give or take — she had been huddled with Pierce and Gallo in a cave on the side of a mountain in Egypt. Now, she was about to go searching for another cave on another mountain, this time in Jordan.

To the north, opposite the church, stood a tall, creepy-looking cross-shaped sculpture. “What’s that?”

“It’s a reimagining of the Nehushtan,” Gallo told her. “The Brazen Serpent that God had instructed Moses to set up to heal anyone bitten by one of the fiery serpents that God had sent to punish them.”

“So God sent the serpents, then told them how to be saved from the serpents.”

“Christians believe the incident was meant to prefigure looking to crucified Christ for salvation. You’ll notice the cross-shaped design of that piece. It’s a modern piece, of course. Not the actual Serpent Moses made.”

“What happened to the real one?” Fiona asked.

“According to the Bible, it was destroyed a few centuries later. The people had started worshipping it, so King Hezekiah had it destroyed.”

“Is that the spot where Moses put it?”

Pierce jumped in. “Remember, the Israelites were a nomadic people, so there was no fixed location for it. This mountain has special significance though, because it’s the place where Moses died. God wouldn’t permit him to enter the Promised Land, but he did get to see it from here. So this place is a symbolic boundary between the Holy Land and the wilderness, divine grace and exile. That’s what makes this the most logical spot for the Ark to be hidden.”

Pierce had clearly put some thought into the matter.

Fiona nodded at the sculpture. “It kind of reminds me of a Caduceus. The symbol for medicine.”

“Technically, the symbol of medicine is the Rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. A staff with one snake. The Caduceus has two snakes and is the symbol of Hermes, the messenger of the gods. The two are commonly confused, but it is interesting how the archetype of the serpent as both a healing figure and a symbol of wisdom is mirrored across different belief systems.” Pierce nodded at the sculpture. “That definitely has elements of both.

“You’ll appreciate this, Fi. Hermes, or Mercury, was also considered the embodiment of wisdom. In Egyptian mythology, he was equated with Thoth, and the Babylonians called him Nabu.”

“Nabu… Nebo?”

Pierce nodded. “And the Egyptian word for ‘gold’ is Nebu. Gold was a sacred metal to the Egyptians, associated with the glory of the sun god. The name for Hathor literally translated as ‘golden goddess.’”

“Hathor, the sun cow lady?”

The trilling of Pierce’s satellite-enabled smartphone interrupted him, just as the conversation was getting interesting. He grinned when he saw the name on the caller ID. “Tell me you’ve got good news, Cintia.”

He listened for a moment, then gestured for Fiona and Gallo to join him in their rented car. Once they were all ensconced within, he set the phone face-up on the center console. “Okay, say that again.”

Dourado sounded like she was stuck in fast forward. It wasn’t too hard to imagine her ensconced in her computer room, mainlining Monster energy drinks. “Are you all sitting down? I hope you’re sitting down because… Mind. Blown.”

“Let’s have it,” Pierce said, sounding far more upbeat than he had any right to.

“Okay, I’m sure you already know most of this, Dr. Pierce, but I’ll start from the beginning. This is from the second book of Maccabees, chapter two. ‘The prophet, in virtue of an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should accompany him. He went to the very mountain that Moses climbed to behold God’s inheritance. When Jeremiah arrived there, he found a chamber in a cave in which he put the tent, the Ark, and the altar of incense; then he sealed the entrance. Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the path, but they could not find it. When Jeremiah heard of this, he reproved them: ‘The place is to remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows them mercy. Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will be seen, just as they appeared in the time of Moses and of Solomon when he prayed that the place might be greatly sanctified. It is also related how Solomon in his wisdom offered a sacrifice for the dedication and the completion of the temple.”’

“The mention of Solomon is significant,” Pierce said, as an aside to Fiona. “Solomon built the Temple as a permanent place to house the Ark, and as a reward, he was blessed with divine wisdom.”

“Wisdom,” Fiona said. “And Nabu, a.k.a. Nebo, is the Babylonian god of wisdom.”

“More proof that we’re in the right place,” Pierce said. “But we need to narrow it down.”

“I’m getting to that,” Dourado said, the words almost running together like the buzz of a bee’s wings. “The chapter begins by referencing another document. This whole account is a synopsis of that other document, but it doesn’t specify the actual source. However, there is a similar account in The Apocalypse of Baruch the Son of Neriah, so that’s probably what they were talking about.

“Baruch has a vision in which he sees an angel go into the Holy of Holies to gather up the Ark and all the treasures of the Tabernacle, after he commands the Earth to hide the treasures, so that strangers — the Babylonians — would not be able to take them. After the vision, Baruch is sent to find Jeremiah. He tells him everything he saw and then they spend seven days together fasting.”

“Baruch was giving Jeremiah his marching orders,” Pierce said.

“He doesn’t explicitly say where Jeremiah was to hide the Ark, but he does say this later on: ‘You priests take you the keys of the sanctuary, and cast them into the height of heaven, and give them to the Lord.’”

“How does that help?” Fiona asked.

“The keys were symbolic of the authority to enter the Temple,” Pierce explained. “There weren’t actual locks on the doors. Casting them into the heavens would be sort of like giving the keys to your apartment back to the landlord when you move out. And remember, Jeremiah was a Kohen. He had God’s permission to enter the Temple.”

“There’s more to it,” Dourado said. “He was being given direction and distance to the place where the Ark was supposed to be hidden.”

“I don’t understand,” Fiona said.

“I’m not sure I do either,” Pierce admitted. “Explain.”

“This is from later in the chapter: ‘And do thou, O sun withhold the light of your rays. And do thou, O moon, extinguish the multitude of your light. For why should light rise again. Where the light of Zion is darkened?’”

“That sounds like a solar event,” Fiona said.

“I know, right?” Dourado agreed. “But it also signifies direction. Sunrise. Due east. Mount Nebo is due east of Jerusalem. This is backed up in the Book of Ezekiel. Chapter eleven makes repeated references to the east gate of the city, and the glory of God—”

“Shekinah,” Gallo murmured.

“—leaving the city and going to stand on a mountain to the east of the city. And what mountain is east of Jerusalem?

“The placement of the Temple in Jerusalem was not random. Everything had symbolic importance. So when Jeremiah throws the keys from the door of the sanctuary, it’s symbolizing that he should travel due east, toward the spot where the sun would appear to rise over Mount Nebo on the day of the vernal equinox, a heading of ninety degrees, adjusting for changes due to precession.”

“Interesting,” Pierce said. “You said direction and distance?”

“Everything about the Temple was precisely measured, and those measurements reflect a very precise mathematical code. The same would be true of the place where the Ark was to be stored until the return. When he talks about throwing the keys to the ‘heights of the heavens,’ it’s not just a metaphor. It indicates a specific measurement, based on the height of the Temple itself. Forty cubits.”

“Forty cubits,” Pierce repeated. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“That same number appears in the Copper Scroll found with the Dead Sea scrolls. In part, it reads: ‘In the ruin that is in the valley of Acor, under the steps, with the entrance at the East, a distance of forty cubits, a strongbox of silver and its vessels with a weight of seventeen talents.’”

“Where’s Acor?” Fiona asked.

Pierce pointed to the west. “It’s supposed to be that way, near the site of Jericho, but nobody’s sure. No one has ever found a treasure matching that description.”

“A Greek talent was believed to be roughly a hundred pounds,” Gallo added. “So seventeen talents would indicate a considerable amount of precious metal, far too much for a single strongbox, I would think. The mention of vessels could refer to the sacred vessels of the Temple.”

“It might not have anything to do with the Ark,” Pierce said, “but the reference to forty cubits is interesting.”

“A cubit was about eighteen inches,” Gallo supplied. “The distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.”

“Actually, it was a variable measurement,” Pierce said. “Anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five inches depending on who you ask.”

“Exactly,” Dourado said. “But the cubit used for measuring the Temple — the Sacred cubit — was 25.20 inches. The same unit of measurement was used for building the Great Pyramid, which is why they are sometimes called Pyramid cubits. That number, 25.20 is important. It’s one percent of 2,520, which is the product of 7 and 360.”

“Seven is the number of God and there are 360 days in the lunar calendar,” Gallo said, as if speaking to herself.

“And 360 degrees in a circle. It’s a recurring numerical value in the Old Testament.”

Pierce shook his head. “It’s a coincidence. Numerologists are always finding patterns that aren’t there. Our system of measurement is an arbitrary value established just a few hundred years ago.”

“That’s not completely true, George,” Gallo countered. “Yes, statute measurements were established by Queen Elizabeth, but they were based on earlier systems of measurement.”

“But still arbitrary.”

“Not necessarily. In the year 240 BC, the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth by comparing the difference in the length of the shadows cast in two different cities at exactly the same time. He calculated the circumference of the Earth to within 1 %. He was able to make that calculation because he knew that a circle could be evenly divided into 360 degrees, each degree measuring 700 stadia.”

“That’s 252,000,” Fiona said. “There’s that number again.”

Gallo nodded. “The error in measurement was due only to the fact that the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, something he couldn’t have known. His method was valid and based on known universal constants. Christopher Columbus used his calculations to plot his circumnavigation, and the only reason he stumbled across America is because he didn’t know which version of the stadia Eratosthenes had used. Like I told you earlier, the ancients were much more sophisticated than we give them credit for. The statute measurement system was based on an older system, so it’s not unreasonable to think that the statute inch was derived from the Sacred cubit, instead of the other way around.”

“That’s right,” Dourado added. “And the statute measurement system was devised in part by Dr. John Dee, who was a devoted scholar of Jewish mysticism. It’s pretty mind-boggling. And I would have been tempted to dismiss it all as rubbish except for one thing, or actually, one man. The guy who figured out this stuff, including the actual length of the Sacred cubit, was none other than Sir Isaac Newton.

“All the discoveries he made — gravity, thermodynamics, the properties of light, calculus — it all came out of his search to unlock the mysteries of the universe. He was convinced that the answer was contained in sacred writings, and in particular, measurements. Two-thirds of Newton’s research, most of which is still unpublished, was devoted to theological mysteries, not scientific, though I’m sure to him it was all part of the same puzzle.

“Newton kept finding a numerical pattern in the dimensions of the Temple and the precise locations of sacred spots. Patterns that were reflected in the universe. In the movement of orbiting bodies and the behavior of light.”

“Okay,” Pierce said. “We’ll assume that Newton knew what he was talking about. You said the height of the Temple was forty Sacred cubits.”

“Eighty-four feet. If you head due east, as reckoned by sunrise on the vernal equinox viewed from the Temple Mount, and adjusting for the changes due to precession, the azimuth crosses the highest point on the ridge at a distance of 168,000 feet—80,000 Sacred cubits or 2,000 times the height of the Temple. That location is about three miles east of where you are, but definitely not on Mount Nebo.

“The exact number 80,000 appears in the Bible three times, all in reference to the building of the Temple of Solomon. ‘Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to bear burdens, and eighty thousand men who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them.’ Did you catch the magic number in there? Seventy thousand and three thousand six hundred…multiply them together and you get 252,000,000 or 2520 times 100,000. If you travel 70,000 cubits from the Temple Mount, 1,750 times the height of the Temple, you hit a spot downslope, about a mile west of where you are.”

Gallo nodded. “So 80,000 cubits is the measurement to the mountain, symbolized by the stone cutters, and 70,000 cubits — represented by the men carrying burdens — is the distance Jeremiah carried the Ark!”

“I’m sending you the coordinates,” Dourado said.

“Is there a cave at that spot?” Pierce asked.

“There doesn’t appear to be one on the satellite photos, but remember, the entrance was closed and hidden so well that the people with Jeremiah couldn’t find it.”

“A hidden entrance that only certain people can find and open,” Gallo murmured, glancing at Fiona. “Where have we heard that before?”

Pierce nodded, but there was an eager gleam in his eyes. “Jeremiah was a Kohen and a Baal’Shem, a Master of the Word.”

“The Mother Tongue,” Fiona said.

“It might just be one particular word. In occult traditions, the Temple Key Cintia mentioned earlier refers to the true pronunciation of God’s name, which possessed extraordinary power and was lost during the Babylonian exile. It was such a powerful word, or so tradition states, that it was forbidden to speak it. That’s why we don’t know what the actual name of God is today.”

“I thought it was Jehovah, or Yahweh. Something like that.”

“Those are approximations,” Gallo said. “In the Book of Exodus, when Moses asks God his name, God answers: ‘I Am that I Am.’ The word ‘I Am’ written in Hebrew corresponds to YHWH — the tetragrammaton — but that’s just the consonants. Written Hebrew doesn’t include the vowels in between, so the pronunciation ‘Yahweh’ is just a guess. Jehovah is a Latinized version of it, the same way Jesus is Latinized from Yeshua.”

“Actually, that may not be right either,” Pierce said. “The name Yahweh showed up later in history. Some scholars think it might have been borrowed from another culture. The oldest name for the deity worshipped by the Israelites seems to be ‘El Shaddai’ or simply ‘El.’”

Fiona didn’t have the same encyclopedic knowledge of the subject as Pierce and Gallo, but she did know languages. “‘El’ is just the word for ‘God.’ The same root word as ‘Allah.’ It’s a title, not a name.”

“Right. And Shaddai is usually translated as ‘almighty.’ Though there’s a lot of debate about its actual meaning. Some scholars think it meant ‘mountain’ or ‘wilderness.’ In fact, it could be the linguistic root for ‘Sinai,’ a reference to the time the Israelites spent there in the time of Moses. Or vice versa. Shaddai could also mean ‘destroyer,’ or possibly even ‘mother.’ The feminine form of the same word is ‘shekinah.’”

“Shaddai, Sinai, Shekinah.” Fiona said, managing a wry smile. “Great Goddess Almighty.”

“George, you’re confusing the girl,” Gallo said.

“Jewish mystics believe that God has seven different names, all of them considered holy. Whatever the true name was, the one thing we do know is that it’s in an extinct language.”

“The Mother Tongue,” Fiona said again, understanding what was being asked of her. Jeremiah had used the secret name of God as a key to lock up the cave where he had hidden the Ark of the Covenant. She was the key that would open it again.

THIRTY-FIVE

His whole life had been leading up to this moment. A quarter of a century had passed, and the dream that had begun in a movie theater was about to reach fruition. George Pierce was about to make the greatest discovery in the history of archaeology.

He looked down at the GPS display on the phone. A red pin marked the coordinates Dourado had uploaded. A blue arrow marked his phone’s location. The two were nearly touching.

He pulled the car to the side of the road and shut off the engine. The Mount Nebo overlook was behind them, less than a mile away. Pierce could distinguish the church and the sculpture of the Brazen Serpent silhouetted against the azure sky. In front of them, the slope fell away, descending three thousand feet to the blue waters of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the Earth’s surface, 1,407 feet below sea level. The pinned location was just two hundred feet north of the road, a spot that could not have been less remarkable.

There was nothing there to suggest a cave, but as Dourado had indicated, that was the point.

With Fiona and Gallo in tow, he started out across the arid ground, watching as the arrow tip moved ever closer to the red pin. Closer.

A message flashed across the top of the screen.

Pierce took a deep breath, savoring the moment, then turned to Fiona. “Anything?”

She shook her head.

He frowned. “Nothing at all? Did you try it with the sphere?”

Fiona held up the orb and waggled it in front of his face. “Zip. Nada. Nothing. Just like on Mount Sinai.”

She compressed the memory metal into a smaller crumple — about the size of a ping pong ball — and shoved it into her pocket.

“Let’s try the GPR,” Pierce said, discouraged, but not ready to give up.

He shrugged out of the backpack and took out the Groundshark. The ground penetrating radar would reveal any tunnels or void spaces up to ten feet below the surface. “Keep an eye out,” he said. “I’d rather not have to explain what we’re doing to any curious passersby.”

He was not certain who owned the land on which they now stood. A ground penetrating radar survey was considered only marginally less invasive than actual digging, and if their activities were reported to the authorities the consequences would be severe. Pierce’s professional reputation and UN affiliation would make matters worse.

Gallo turned toward the mountain, the likeliest place from which they might be observed. “All clear for now.”

Pierce switched on the unit and knelt down, sweeping it back and forth. The display showed a dense subsurface — solid rock just below the thin layer of compacted sediment. He covered the target area and then started working outward, expanding the search area one square yard at a time. As he did, he felt less like Indiana Jones and more like a desperate treasure hunter with a metal detector and a crazy dream.

He should have known better. Numerology was just an elaborate form of pareidolia, seeing patterns where none truly existed.

Sacred cubits and recurring numbers, my a—

Hold on.

He stopped, then went back and swept the last section again, eyes riveted to the image on the screen.

“There’s a void here!”

THIRTY-SIX

From his concealed position in the back of a minivan parked atop Mount Nebo, Craig Williams stared through the high-powered scope at the three figures. He settled the crosshairs on the kneeling figure — the man, George Pierce — watching him sweep a handheld device back and forth across the arid hardpan. Williams used the tick marks on the crosshairs to estimate the range to target and the time it would take for a bullet to travel that distance.

Three seconds, he thought.

He shifted the scope onto the older woman.

Older maybe, but I’d tap that.

He had not been told her name, but with her long black hair and olive complexion, she looked kind of like the lady in that last James Bond flick, the French actress.

Sophie…no, Monica. Monica… Something.

He decided to call the dark-haired woman ‘the French Chick.’ She was mostly standing still, though every few seconds, her head moved slowly from side-to-side, looking around.

Williams moved to the last person, the younger woman — she looked like a kid. Black hair, dark skin… Mexican maybe? She wasn’t glamorous like the French Chick, but she wasn’t fugly, for damn sure.

He centered the crosshairs on the side of her head, his trigger finger curling almost subconsciously.

No wind. Three seconds to target.

His finger curled.

“Bang,” he whispered.

With a sigh of pent-up frustration, he moved the crosshairs back onto Pierce, the only member of the group who appeared to be doing anything. Exactly what he was doing was a mystery to Williams, but he had been hired to observe, nothing more.

No sniping today.

The scope wasn’t even attached to a rifle. The man who had contracted him and the rest of the Alpha Dog team had fronted them the money to buy black market weapons, ‘just in case,’ but he had made it clear that killing Pierce and the others was not the primary objective.

Williams was a veteran of the Iraq war, where he had been a sniper before being discharged. He took a job with a private military contracting firm called Alpha Dog Solutions, so he could keep doing what he did best: kicking ass and taking names.

Alpha Dog’s leadership had made some bad decisions, lost key personnel in botched field ops, and ultimately gone bust, but their misfortune had been Williams’s opportunity. He had dusted off the name and rebooted the defunct company. The contracts weren’t as exciting as they had been back in the glory days, but the Alpha Dog name still held a certain cachet with potential clients, especially those who didn’t know any better.

Actually, this was their first big A-list gig, and Williams did not want to screw it up. If the man said watch, then watch he would.

Pierce was no longer on his knees. Instead, he was standing, gesturing wildly. Found something, did you?

The French Chick was smiling — she was too cool to get excited — and the Mexican Girl just looked a little worried. Nevertheless, she took a step forward, positioning herself on the exact spot where Pierce had been kneeling a moment before. Her lips began moving, though she didn’t appear to be speaking to anyone.

Then, she took a step forward and vanished.

Williams jerked the scope back and forth, trying to locate her again. He reduced the magnifying power of the scope from 25x to 15x, then to 10x. He could see the other two, standing there, staring at that same spot, but there was no sign of the girl.

Where the hell did she go?

Suddenly, she popped back into view. Part of her, anyway. The girl’s head and shoulders protruded from the desert floor, but everything below the center of her chest was concealed.

What is that, a trap door or something? he thought.

She made a ‘come on’ gesture and then was gone again. After a moment, Pierce and the French Chick stepped forward and also vanished.

Williams scanned the area trying to find the hidden door through which the group had passed but there wasn’t one. The trio had stepped into the ground and disappeared. He set the scope down and turned to look at his employer.

“Mr. Fallon, you are not going to believe this.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Carter’s face was hidden by a netela—the traditional head covering worn by many Ethiopian women, but when she turned her head to look at him, Lazarus saw an uncharacteristic anxiety in her eyes. Felice Carter was one of the strongest women — no, that was wrong — one of the strongest people he had ever known. She had to be, to bear the burden fate had laid upon her. That strength took the shape of exceptional mental discipline. She wasn’t without emotion like Spock from Star Trek, but she knew how to keep emotion and fear from short-circuiting rational thought.

“You okay?” he asked.

She looked at him, smiled, and gestured out the window of their taxi. “It’s just this place. Ethiopia. This is where it happened.”

Lazarus nodded. For all their time together, this was something they had never discussed in detail. He had learned of the event before meeting her for the first time, and there had never been cause to question her further about the particulars of that incident. He knew that Carter had been in Ethiopia as part of an expedition looking for prehistoric genetic material in the Great Rift Valley, where the remains of the oldest primate ancestors of humanity had been discovered. They had spent much of their two years together on the African continent, but their travels had never brought them back to Ethiopia, the place where Carter had been exposed to the paleo-historic retrovirus that had turned her into a living evolutionary kill-switch.

Everyone had their issues, and hers was a doozy. But his was pretty intense, too.

“We’re at least three hundred miles from there,” he said. He meant it to sound reassuring, but they had traveled thousands of miles from Switzerland to Ethiopia. Three hundred miles didn’t seem all that far by comparison.

Axum had been the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, but now it was a small city of fifty thousand inhabitants, poised on the edge of the ever-encroaching desert. There were as many camels as cars on the main paved road. There was an airport though, about five miles from the center of town. The architecture was simple and traditional, mostly adobe-covered brick buildings. Lazarus saw no evidence of earthquake damage. The inhabitants of the region had been spared that additional hardship.

Carter offered a sad smile. “Same country. Same people. We were here for weeks before it happened. I got to know some of the locals very well. And one of them…” She trailed off, her smile slipping along with a measure of her control.

Lazarus didn’t press the issue. “Is that when you learned about the rumor of the Ark being here?”

She shifted, packing the emotions away. “Rumor isn’t the right word for it. The Ark is part of Ethiopia’s cultural heritage. Every single Ethiopian Orthodox church in the world has a consecrated replica of the Ark. That’s a tradition that goes back at least to the fourth century. The traditional belief that the Ark is here goes back even further. The Kingdom of Aksum, which is where this city got its name, converted to Judaism in the time of Solomon.”

“You did your homework before you came here, didn’t you?”

“I saw a special about it on the Discovery Channel.” Carter smiled.

“So do you believe the Ark is here?”

She shrugged. “Until last night, I didn’t even think it was a real thing. But George seems to think it’s real enough, so maybe it is.”

“Do you think it’s here?” Lazarus asked.

Before she could answer, the taxi stopped in front of a dirt road that cut through a wooded area for at least a hundred yards before ending at an enormous, and almost futuristic-looking domed structure.

Lazarus handed their driver two hundred birr notes — about twenty dollars — and thanked the man. “Betam ahmesugenalew.”

The voice was not his own, but an auto-tuned approximation, the Amharic translation supplied courtesy of Dourado’s babelfish translation system. The driver replied in the same language, and a fraction of a second later, Lazarus heard the English translation in his earpiece. “No problem.”

They got out and started down the dirt path to The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo cathedral said by some to house the Ark of the Covenant. Along the way, they passed several locals, all wearing long white garments and head coverings. The women, like Carter, wore netela scarves, and the men were similar in wraps called kutas. Directly ahead, lay the front of the domed building, with a façade of large arches, the largest of which framed the wooden double doors leading inside.

Lazarus muted the phone so the babelfish translators wouldn’t translate their conversation. “That’s a church? It looks more like a moonbase.”

“That cathedral was built in the 1950s. Modern architecture was all the rage then, I guess. But there’s been a church here almost as long as there have been Christians in Ethiopia.”

She said nothing more on the subject, remaining silent as they ascended the steps and passed through the large wooden doors and into the church.

Lazarus was a bit surprised at the interior’s brightness. The apse was well-lit thanks to a ring of windows atop the dome and several arched windows with clear and colored glass. The peach-colored walls were adorned with murals and icons, all rendered in bright colors. The blue sky in several of the paintings stood in stark contrast to the red carpet and the orange curtains behind the Eucharist altar. He was still trying to process the explosion of color when Carter pointed to the altar. “There it is.”

He focused on the rectangular structure, adorned with a relief that he could not quite make out from the entrance, and a gilt overlay. “That’s the Ark?”

“In a manner of speaking. It’s a tabot, a replica, but it does contain a copy of the Ten Commandments made from the original. So in a way, it is an Ark of the Covenant.”

“But it won’t have what we need to shut down the Black Knight.” He kept studying the altar. He repeated the question that she had avoided answering. “Do you think the real Ark is here?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I think Pierce is right that there were powerful political reasons for the Ethiopian rulers to claim that the Ark was here, but I also think you can’t just ignore the fact that millions of Ethiopians believe it, and have for more than two thousand years.”

“A lot of people think Elvis is still alive. That doesn’t make it true.”

A faint grin touched her lips. “It doesn’t make it untrue either.”

“Point taken.” He nodded his head in the direction of the altar. “If every Ethiopian church has one, how are we going to recognize the real deal? How do we tell the real Elvis from the impersonators?”

“The real Ark is covered in gold. I’m guessing they didn’t go that extra mile with the copies. And then there’s the lid with the angels.”

He noticed a priest, a middle-aged man wearing gray vestments, moving in their direction. “Game time,” he said. “How do we want to play this?”

“I may not be a believer, but I don’t feel comfortable lying to a priest.”

“Cards on the table, then.” He unmuted the mic on the phone and took a step toward the priest. “Good afternoon. I’m Erik Lazarus, Director of Operations for the Cerberus Group. Who can I talk to about borrowing the Ark of the Covenant?”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Walking through not-quite-solid rock was a little like walking through dense fog. Although Pierce had donned his headlamp before, he couldn’t see the light, or anything else, until the crossing was complete and he stepped out onto the floor of a rough natural cave. Fiona was already there, her headlamp shining down the unexplored passage.

The passage, a narrow slot in the rock just higher than he was tall, reminded him of the Siloam Tunnel in Jerusalem, a seventeen-hundred-foot long tunnel carved in the days of King Hezekiah to provide water to the city during times of siege. This passage was wider, and of course, bone dry.

His excitement was back with a vengeance, but now that the prize was at last within his grasp, he was mindful of the other lessons he had learned from his fictional hero. “Okay, watch your step in here. There might be traps or…”

“Snakes?” Gallo asked with a wry smile.

“I was going to say other dangers, but yes, snakes or some other kind of guardian creature. We need to be on the lookout for stuff like that. Remember those things in Arkaim? I think long-term exposure to Originator relics can have an effect on evolution.”

Fiona glanced down at the sphere in her hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t be hanging onto this thing then?”

“I’m sure you’re safe,” Pierce said. “In fact, I know it.”

Gallo raised an eyebrow. “Why do I get the impression there’s something you’re not telling us?”

“Remember how I told you that only the Kohen — someone from the line of Moses’s brother Aaron — could safely approach the Ark? Well I think there’s a scientific explanation for that. A genetic trait that makes them immune to the more dangerous effects of Originator technology. Fiona has that trait.”

The young woman was surprised at this revelation. “You think I’m a Kohen?”

“Not necessarily descended from the line of Aaron, but you possess the trait. My guess is that it’s a dominant genetic factor among cultures that held onto the Mother Tongue the longest. That’s why you can use the words. You could teach them to me and I could say them until I was blue in the face, but I would never be able to make a golem.

“And there’s something else, too. Remember when you tried to clear a path through the shekinahs? You got a shock from it, but I think that shock would have killed anyone else. The point is, I think that’s the reason you had that vision of Raven back at Arkaim. You’re the only one who can use the Ark to shut down the Black Knight.”

Fiona took this news without comment, and for a fleeting second, Pierce wondered if perhaps he was being a little too cavalier about her abilities. But this close to the prize, there wasn’t time for sweet talk. Right now, he needed Fiona the Kohen, the Baal’Shem, the last speaker of the Siletz tribal language.

He shone his lamp down the passage, a straight shot angling toward the mountain as far as the light extended. “Nobody has been here in over two thousand years,” he said. “We’re walking in the footsteps of Jeremiah the prophet.”

Fiona shrugged. “The air’s pretty fresh.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. Pierce knew from experience that strange things happened to the air in tombs and caverns that were shut off from the outside world for long periods of time. Methane could seep through the rock and collect into deadly clouds. Decaying rock could produce radon and other poisonous gases. Fresh air could mean another entrance, and that was not a notion Pierce found at all comforting.

Gallo gave his hand a squeeze. She knew how much this meant to him.

There were no traps or snakes, which was a little disappointing but not surprising. Between the sealed cave entrance and the Ark’s own self-defense mechanism, there was little need for additional protection. The only real surprise was the length of the passage.

After walking for ten full minutes, Pierce broke the silence. “I thought the Ark would be near the entrance. The location of the Ark’s resting place should have been a function of the same calculation that brought us here. Now, the math is all messed up.”

“How far do you think we’ve come?” Gallo asked.

Pierce shrugged. “Half a mile? Less?”

“How much is that in Sacred cubits?” Fiona remarked.

Gallo snapped her fingers. “Of course. There was a third number in that account. Solomon had 80,000 stonecutters in the mountains, 70,000 bearers. And 3,600 overseers.”

“3,600 Sacred cubits,” Pierce said, grasping the significance. “The final distance Jeremiah would have to travel once he reached the entrance to the cave.”

“That’s about 7,500 feet,” Fiona said, doing the math in her head. “A mile and a half.”

A mile and a half. Pierce felt even more certain that they were on the right track. He started counting his steps and checking his watch to judge their pace. The passage itself was an anomaly, far too straight to be the work of nature, but he saw no obvious sign of tool marks on the walls that might indicate the handiwork of laborers.

Ten more minutes passed and Pierce’s eagerness to see the prize at the end of the passage grew to something resembling anxiety. The seconds were stretching out like Silly Putty. He checked his watch, expecting five minutes to have passed, and discovered that only thirty seconds had elapsed since his last check.

“Do you think the Ark is distorting time?” he said. “Like in that movie where time slows down the closer you get to a black hole?”

“It only seems to slow down from an outside point of view,” Fiona corrected. “It still feels normal to the person near the black hole.”

“There’s a name for what you’re experiencing,” Gallo told him. “It’s the watched-pot-never-boils effect.”

He knew she was right but that didn’t make it any easier.

Then, with no apparent warning, the passage opened up into a larger lobe-shaped chamber, at least two hundred feet across, and just as abruptly, it ended.

“It’s a cul-de-sac,” Pierce said, a gnawing feeling growing in his stomach. He ran to the far wall, then began skirting along the wall, making his way back to the mouth of the passage. “This can’t be right. Look around. Maybe there’s a secret door. Or…” He turned to Fiona. “Do you sense anything?”

She shook her head.

“George, look up there.” Gallo pointed to the ceiling in the center of the chamber. The beam of light from her headlamp had disappeared into a shadowy recess, a hole about eight feet across, and a good ten feet above their heads. “It’s an oculus. Like in the Pantheon. Could that be where we need to go?”

Pierce moved to stand under it and shone his light up into the opening. The oculus, a design feature of domed Roman temples from antiquity, was a hole that allowed both sunlight and rain to fall into the interior. This vertical shaft however was dark and without end, but it did underscore a fact that Pierce had not considered. The long passage had gone under the mountain ridge, which meant they were hundreds of feet underground.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Everything we’ve found suggests that Jeremiah came in through the same passage we did. I’ll sweep with the GPR. There has to be another way out of here.”

He started to unsling his backpack, but as he did, he realized there was something different about the floor beneath the opening, right where he was standing.

“No,” he whispered, dropping to his knees, tracing the carved outline with his fingers. “Oh, no.”

Gallo and Fiona were at his side a moment later.

Fiona pointed at the carving. “Is that…?”

“A Templar Cross,” Gallo supplied. “I’m afraid it is.”

“The Ark isn’t here,” Pierce said, his voice a whisper. “The Knights Templar took it eight hundred years ago.”

THIRTY-NINE

“Abba Paulos tells me that you are interested in the Ark of the Covenant.”

Carter stared at the man the priest had introduced as Abuna Mateos, the Bishop of Axum. Mateos had a high-pitched voice and spoke with a cadence that sounded almost musical. He was older, with tufts of wispy gray hair protruding out from under the cylindrical gold-colored cap, which matched his long vestments. But his clean-shaven face looked almost youthful, making it impossible to guess his age with certainty.

“You speak English?” she said.

Mateos, who had been looking at Lazarus, turned to face her with a perturbed expression. Carter knew that look well: the why are you speaking to me, woman look. She had experienced it many times during her years working with relief agencies. To his credit, Mateos hid his displeasure with a smile. “Yes. Also French, Arabic, Hebrew, and of course, Amharic.”

Lazarus thumbed a button on his phone, disabling the babelfish. “I’m Erik Lazarus. This is Dr. Felice Carter.” She noted the emphasis on the title, an attempt to elevate her status somewhat in his eyes. “And yes, we’d like to talk about the Ark.”

Mateos listened, without comment or visible reaction, as they made the connection between the recent earthquakes and solar events with the Ark of the Covenant, and more time trying to establish that they were not kooks or treasure hunters.

After about five minutes of this, the clergyman raised his hands. “Let me understand. You believe that Ark can be used to stop these earthquakes. That is your only interest in it?”

“That’s right,” Carter said. “I know it sounds crazy—”

“Certainly not. God has power over the heavens and Earth. The question before us is whether it is His will to do so. In the Gospels, the Lord warned us that in the Last Days, there would be earthquakes in many places and great signs in Heaven.” His solemn face cracked with a smile. “He also said that we should not be troubled by such things, for the End is not yet come.”

He paused a moment, studying their faces, as if trying to decide whether or not to trust them. “Please, come with me. I want to show you something.”

He led them outside and around to the south end of the cathedral building. At the end of a sprawling courtyard stood the old cathedral, a more traditional looking structure from the seventeenth century. Silhouetted against the old church, separated from the courtyard by a tall wrought-iron fence, were a pair of smaller cube-shaped chapels, the larger of the two topped with an onion dome and a cross.

Mateos pointed to one of the smaller structures. “That is the Chapel of the Tablets, where the Ark is kept. When I was a young man, the Ark was kept in the sanctuary of the church, concealed behind a curtain, just as in the Tabernacle that Moses built, but after many years, the heat—” He squeezed his fist, “—of the Glory of God kept cracking the stones of the floor. So, this chapel was built, according to the same specifications that Moses used. The floor stones, they never cracked again.

“The Glory of God,” he repeated. “It is not for men to see. Only one man, the guardian, a brother of the holy order, who never leaves the chapel, may go before the Ark to offer incense, just as in the days of Moses. I have not seen the Ark. No one but the guardian may see the Ark. Anyone else…” He made a lateral slicing gesture. “Dead. So you see, I cannot help you. The Ark must remain in the Chapel.”

“What good is having it, if you can’t use it when you need it?” Lazarus said. Carter could tell from his tone that he was holding back his frustration.

“It is a symbol of God’s presence,” Mateo said, his tone still patient, but with a slight edge. “Not something that we are meant to use.”

Carter spoke up. “Abuna, has it occurred to you that perhaps this is the reason the Ark was given to your Church? So that it would be available when this time of need arose?”

Mateo gave her a patronizing smile. “My child, has it occurred to you that God sends these signs, these earthquakes, so that we may demonstrate our faith in Him?” He pressed his hands together as if genuflecting. “I am sorry that you have come all this way, but it is not for nothing. Go, and may God’s peace be upon you.” He bowed his head and then turned away without another word.

When he was gone, Lazarus sighed. “That went well.”

“About as well as expected.”

“Convenient how nobody ever gets to see it. They never have to prove it’s in there.”

“Still, if it was a fake, you’d think someone would have exposed it by now.”

Lazarus nodded, staring at the chapel, but he said nothing. She watched him for a few seconds. “What are you thinking?”

“George sent us here to check it out. Rule it out. That’s what we have to do.”

“We can’t just force our way in there and take it.” When he didn’t respond, she repeated the statement. “We can’t do that, Erik.”

“If it’s a fake, we won’t need to take it. I just need a few seconds with it.”

“How are you going to tell the difference in a few seconds?”

“Like you said, it’s covered in gold. It will be heavy.”

“And if it’s real, just touching it might…” She trailed off. “Erik, you’re not… No. You can’t do that.”

He reached out and pulled her into an embrace that felt almost as indulgent as Mateo’s smile. “Pretty sure I’m the only one who can.”

FORTY

Fiona stared down at the cross carved into the cavern floor. It was symmetrical, all four arms the same length, like a Swiss cross or a plus-sign, with flaring serifs at each end. “Knights Templar,” she echoed. “Crusaders?”

She knew a little about the Templar Knights, but she also recognized that a lot of her knowledge was suspect. The Templars showed up in a lot places — video games, adventure novels, conspiracy theories — and most of what was said about them was exaggerated, sensationalized, or outright fiction.

Gallo answered first. “A Christian military order, founded in the twelfth century. They called themselves the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. Poor, because they took a monastic vow of poverty, but that didn’t last long. They were founded to provide protection for Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade, but they became very wealthy and influential in the Church. Some scholars have called them the world’s first multinational corporation. Of course, they were also fierce and ruthless fighters.”

“There have always been rumors that the Templars found the Ark,” Pierce said with a scowl. “Along with the Holy Grail, the True Cross, the bones of Mary Magdalene…you name it, the Templars found it. I guess this is one time that the rumors were right.”

“Found it how?” Fiona asked. “They didn’t come in the same way we did.” She paused a beat, then added. “Did they?”

“It’s possible,” Pierce admitted. “Maybe one of them spoke the Mother Tongue as well. Or…” He looked up, shining his light into the opening overhead. “They might have dug straight down.”

“But how would they have even known where to look? Did they work it out, like we did?”

Pierce gave a snort of disgust. “Not likely. Not unless someone told them the length of a Sacred cubit.” He stopped, as if the words had triggered a thought cascade. He looked away, as if searching for the answer in the dimensions of the chamber.

“The Templars were headquartered on the Temple Mount,” Gallo said. “Perhaps they found some ancient scroll — the Copper Scroll, maybe — describing the hiding place of the Ark.”

Pierce continued to stare at the wall, lost in whatever musings had distracted him. Gallo went on. “When they got here, there were probably all kinds of scrolls and maps that don’t exist today. They must have found something that led them here.”

“So if they took the Ark, what did they do with it?”

“By the thirteenth century,” Gallo said, still in history professor mode, “the tide had turned against the Christian crusaders in the Holy Lands. The Templars relocated their headquarters, and the bulk of their treasure, to Cyprus.

“Like any successful business, they had enemies. King Philip of France owed the Templars a lot of money and resented their influence, which went beyond national boundaries. So in 1307, he conspired with the Church to have the order disbanded and their leadership arrested and charged with crimes against God.

“Their assets were seized and turned over to a rival order, the Hospitallers of Malta.” Gallo paused and raised a thoughtful eyebrow. “I doubt very much that they, or the Templars for that matter, would have kept the discovery of something as important as the Ark of the Covenant a secret.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Pierce said, returning his attention to them. “The Ark wasn’t just a treasure or a holy relic. It was a weapon, and if word got out that the Templars had it, it would have been the start of an arms race. Everyone in Christendom would have gone to war to possess it. In fact, that may have been part of King Philip’s motive for trying to overthrow the Templars.

“There’s another rumor that the Templars were warned of the plot, and that, before their arrest, they spirited their greatest treasures away in a hay wagon. After that…” He shrugged. “It depends on which wild theory you believe. A lot of people believe that the Templars went underground, guarding the treasure, and eventually reformed as the Freemasons. There’s a lot of Templar symbolism in Masonic rites, so maybe there’s some truth to it. And if you follow that thread a little further, it might have been brought to America. Several of the Founding Fathers were Freemasons.”

“Where do you think it is?”

“An excellent question.”

Fiona let out a yelp and whirled in the direction of the new voice, her heart already racing out of control. Pierce and Gallo reacted about the same way, illuminating the face of the newcomer. A young-looking, red-haired Caucasian man stood at the mouth of the tunnel leading back the way they had come. He took a step forward, revealing that he wasn’t alone. Two more men followed him out of the passage. Both wore military-style fatigues and carried compact Uzi machine pistols. They held the weapons casually, pointed at the floor, but the very fact of their presence was a tacit threat.

“So tell us, Dr. Pierce,” the red-haired man said. “Where do you think the Templars took the Ark?”

FORTY-ONE

Pierce recognized the voice. “Fallon?”

“We meet at last,” Fallon said with a chuckle, sounding a little like a cartoon villain. Pierce wondered if that was intentional. He started forward, into the chamber, while the two gunmen remained at the mouth of the passage like a pair of sentries. “I’m sorry, I feel as if I already know you, but we haven’t been properly introduced. Yes, I’m Marcus Fallon. And you are Drs. Pierce and Gallo. I’ve learned so much about you.” He paused, looking at Fiona. “I don’t know who you are, but you seem very intelligent and in such good company, too.”

Fiona glanced at Pierce, as if looking for guidance. Pierce gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. The less Fallon knew about her, the better. Fiona, got the message. She nodded her head at the two gunmen. “Sorry, guns make me nervous.”

Fallon laughed. “Don’t worry about my friends. They’re just here for logistical support. This is a dangerous place, you know. Terrorists and extremists lurking around every corner. By the way, you have got to tell me about that trick with the entrance. Is that an optical illusion of some kind?”

“Something like that,” Pierce tried to make it sound like a joke, but he felt no humor. Fallon had tracked them here. Spied on them. Watched them enter the tunnel. Followed them with a pair of gunslingers to provide back-up. “So, you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

“Something like that.” Fallon advanced into the center of the chamber until he was face to face with Pierce. He looked down at the carved cross. “Templars. I’ve tangled with them many times.” He looked up and grinned. “Assassin’s Creed.”

“It’s a video game,” Fiona murmured, noting Pierce’s blank look.

“So,” Fallon went on, “where did they take it?”

“Why are you here, Fallon? I told you, we’ll take care of this. This is what we do.”

“Oh, I heard you. You made your intentions crystal clear. Find the Ark, and shut the Black Knight down for good.” He shook his head. “Have you stopped to consider the awesome opportunity here? I know, I know, mistakes were made. Tanaka… Don’t get me started on him. But to turn our backs on this now is just criminal. We can harness the full power of the sun. Do you even realize what that means? Unlimited clean energy. This is the solution to all our problems.”

“Isn’t that what they said about atomic energy?” Gallo remarked. Her tone was sarcastic, but Pierce detected the undercurrent of fear.

“She’s right,” Pierce said. “As great as it all sounds, I just don’t think we’re ready for that much power.”

Fallon did not appear surprised by the objection. “We could be you, Dr. Pierce. We — you and I — would control this for the good of all mankind. The Black Knight isn’t anyone’s property. The sun’s energy belongs to everyone. Think of the good we could accomplish.”

Pierce heard a note of insincerity in the other man’s voice. Fallon wasn’t interested in being the savior of the world. He wanted to be the man who owned the sun.

“We’ll take it slow, of course,” Fallon continued. “Establish protocols to ensure that we don’t trigger more tidal earthquakes. That shouldn’t be a problem. Set graduated goals, and once we’ve demonstrated that we’ve got it under control, we’ll begin developing infrastructure to—”

“Stop!” Pierce’s shout reverberated through the confines of the chamber. In a more subdued voice, he continued. “Just stop. This isn’t going to happen. The Black Knight isn’t some gift from the gods. It’s a Pandora’s Box. It’s a land mine, left behind by an alien species, and if we mess with it, it’s going to blow up in our faces. I’m not going to let Tanaka do that on purpose, and I’m sure as hell not going to help you do it by accident.”

Fallon smiled. “Good. That’s why you’re the best person to help me with this. Your caution will keep my enthusiasm in check. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Right now at least, we don’t have the means to do any of this.” He paused, maintaining eye contact with Pierce. “First things first. The Ark. Where is it? What did they do with it?”

“We are not working together.” Pierce spoke, enunciating each word for emphasis.

“You’re sure?” Fallon bobbed his head over one shoulder, to the pair of gunmen lingering near the passage.

“If you’re the man I think you are,” Pierce said, “you aren’t going to use threats of violence to get your way. And if I’m wrong about you…well, then I definitely don’t want you getting your hands on that much power.”

The other man burst out laughing, the sound harsh as it reverberated in the chamber. After a few seconds, he brought himself under control. “Well played. You’re right, of course. I’m not a bully. I despise bullies.” He sighed. “But I’m not going to give up, either. It’s a race, now, and I’m afraid I need to handicap you a bit.”

He gave Pierce a hard stare for several seconds, then turned to Gallo. “You’re a very intelligent woman, Dr. Gallo. I heard you talking when we came in. I suspect you know as much about the Templars, if not more, than Dr. Pierce here.”

“Fallon, don’t.” Pierce tried to inject a tone of menace into his voice, but it sounded more like pleading in his own ears.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. My friends and I are going to leave with Dr. Gallo. Pierce, you and your…” He stared at Fiona for a moment. “Whatever you are. You two are going to stay put a little while, to give me a head start.”

“You’ve made your point,” Pierce said.

“Oh, no. That ship has sailed. You two are staying here.” He turned to one of this hired gunmen. “When we get back to the entrance, I want you to stay behind for…let’s say three hours?” He looked back at Pierce. “Is that enough? Three hours. He’s going to watch the entrance, and if either of you pokes your head out, he’s going to shoot it off.”

He flashed a mock-helpless grin. “That’s why I brought them along. I could never do something like that, but believe me, they can and will.”

Gallo let out a plaintive wail and shrank into Pierce’s arms, hugging him, but when she whispered into his ear, her voice was steady. “George, what should I do?”

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised, but it sounded empty in his ears. “Just go along with him. Do what he says. We’ll be fine. One way or another, we’re going to find the Ark and stop Tanaka and his death cult. We can figure the rest of it out later on.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she whispered. “I don’t suppose you’ve got an idea about where to look next.”

“Ask the Templars.”

“This is very touching,” Fallon said, “but it’s time to go.”

Pierce gave Gallo another reassuring squeeze before releasing her. “Fallon, listen to me. The Ark is dangerous. If you do find it, don’t touch it. Don’t try to do anything with it. You’ll just get yourself killed.”

It seemed like the right thing to say.

The other man regarded him with a cool, skeptical look. “Thanks for the warning. For your sake, I hope you’re wrong.” He turned to Gallo. “Shall we?”

FORTY-TWO

Gallo’s heart raced as she stepped away from Pierce. She was afraid, no doubt about that, but she had been in stickier situations. She wasn’t that worried for her own safety. She was worried for Pierce and Fiona. Fallon was ambitious and greedy, but he didn’t strike her as a killer. The mercenaries with him however, seemed all too eager to carry out his threat. But she held her head high, willing herself to remain strong, to accept this reversal on her own terms.

They exited the chamber and started down the passage. Fallon walked ahead of Gallo, both of them bracketed by the hired guns. After a few minutes of walking, Fallon looked back over his shoulder. “So, where to next? I know you must have some ideas about this.”

Gallo considered Pierce’s parting advice. Ask the Templars. “Ideas are all I have,” she admitted. “What I need are facts, to help me start eliminating the least plausible scenarios.”

“Dr. Pierce mentioned the Freemasons. Is that a possibility?”

She resisted the urge to snap at him. “As I said, I need facts. People have been speculating about and looking for Templar treasure for centuries. Nothing has ever been found. If we’re going to find something, we have to take a different approach. We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel.”

He gave her a long, appraising glance before returning his gaze forward again. He said nothing more as they made the twenty minute long trek back to the end of the tunnel, giving Gallo a chance to review her own knowledge about the Templars. Her professional area of expertise encompassed the beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire, and she knew more than the average person about the Crusades in the broader context of history. But what she did not have was a working knowledge of the more radical ideas and fringe theories, and that was where she would find the golden thread that would lead her to the Ark.

Which raised the question of whether she ought to. Maybe it would be smarter to lead Fallon astray, clearing a path for Pierce and Fiona to find the Ark. Pierce had told her to go along with Fallon, but exactly what he meant by that was open to interpretation.

Fallon stopped and she almost ran into him. Ahead, the gunman in the lead had also halted as the ceiling sloped down to block their way. “Dead end, boss.”

“It’s just an illusion,” Fallon said. “Keep going.”

The mercenary reached out with one hand, testing the solidity of the stone. Gallo held her breath. Fiona’s Mother Tongue incantation could change the matter state of rock without altering its appearance, but how long the effect would last was a big unknown. The man’s fingers sank into the sloping barrier as if it was a holographic projection.

As the first man disappeared into the wall, Fallon turned around shining his flashlight down the passage behind them. “It looks like Pierce took my advice to stay put.”

“Looks that way,” agreed the mercenary.

“Did you bring explosives? C-4 or whatever you call it?”

The other man nodded.

“I don’t want Pierce following us,” Fallon went on. “As soon as we’re outside, I want you to blast the entrance.”

Gallo’s heart skipped a beat. “No!”

She started toward him, hands raised without any idea of what she intended to do if she actually landed a blow. As it was, she never even got close. The mercenary threw his arms around her, restraining her.

“Once we find the Ark, I’ll make sure they’re dug out. They’ll live, provided you remain cooperative.”

“You can’t do this,” she said, the protest tumbling from her lips.

“Oh, but I can.” Fallon leaned in close. “I told you it was a race. Now you have a personal stake in it.”

Even as Gallo struggled in her captor’s grip, the harsh reality of the situation filtered through her panic. Her protests would accomplish nothing. Fallon wasn’t going to change his mind. But she also knew something Fallon didn’t know. Fiona could walk through walls — at least some of the time. And that gave her hope.

She sagged in defeat and allowed herself to be ushered through the lightless haze separating the tunnel from the surface. Two more mercenaries were waiting outside, guarding the exit, and as soon as they were all clear, one of the men hurried to carry out Fallon’s orders. He produced a large satchel, almost overstuffed with blocks of plastic explosives, and re-entered the concealed passage, disappearing from sight. When he came back out again, he carried a spool of wire, which he played out until it was empty. He then attached a small plastic device that looked a little like a grip exerciser.

“Better duck,” he advised. “Fire in the hole.”

As soon as Gallo was huddled on the ground, the man squeezed the device three times in rapid succession. On the second squeeze, there was a resounding thump underfoot, and a cloud of dust rose up from the area where they had just been standing.

Fallon turned to her. “It’s up to you now, Dr. Gallo. If you ever want to see them again, find the Ark for me.”

Gallo nodded, pretending to be mortified. It would take more than a cave-in to keep Pierce and Fiona down.

FORTY-THREE

Pierce waited about five minutes after Fallon’s departure to start working on the problem of escape. He had no intention of sitting on his butt for three hours, leaving Gallo in Fallon’s clutches, but he also knew better than to test the tech billionaire’s resolve. Fallon might not have the stomach to pull the trigger himself, but Pierce knew the mercenaries would follow the standing order.

He studied the cross on the floor and the opening above for a few minutes, and reached a decision. “Fi, are you ready to get out of here?”

“Yeah,” Fiona replied. “But you heard what that jerk said.”

“I did. He said he was going to have one of his hired goons watch the entrance. But maybe there’s another way out of here that he doesn’t know about.” He pointed to the hole in the ceiling. “Think that goes all the way to the top?”

Fiona shook her head. “Maybe it used to, but I think if it did, someone would have found this place by now.”

“Good point. So maybe the Templars covered it over once they were done removing the Ark.”

“So how do we get up there?”

“That’s the flaw in my plan,” Pierce admitted. He sank down onto the floor to consider the problem.

He was still doing that when a hot breeze issued from the passage, spiking the air pressure and forcing him to work his jaw to pop his ears. A moment later, a loud boom, like the report of a cannon, rushed out of the tunnel and shook the ground underfoot.

“What the hell?” Pierce jumped to his feet as the tunnel vomited a cloud of dust over them. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to hold his breath as the grit filled the air. “Son of a bitch,” he coughed. “He blasted the entrance.”

Fiona covered her mouth and nose with a sleeve and squinted at Pierce through the haze. “He tried to kill us.” Then she lowered her arm and broke into a grin. “He doesn’t know what I can do.”

Pierce answered with a smile of his own. “No, he doesn’t.”

They didn’t wait for the dust to settle, but started down the passage at a jog. The air cleared as they ran, but a cloud of anger soon replaced it for Pierce. Anger at Fallon. Anger at himself for having misjudged the man. Anger at his inability to save Gallo. He barely noticed the cracks and fissures that now crisscrossed the walls and ceiling, or the piles of rubble that littered the floor of the passage. Then he saw something moving in the gloom.

He skidded to an abrupt halt. Fiona slammed into him from behind.

“Go back!” he shouted, spinning around. He grasped hold of her shoulders, then turned her as well. “Now! Faster!”

She waited until they were moving again to ask him why.

Pierce glanced back, his headlamp revealing dozens of writhing shapes. “Snakes.”

‘Why did it have to be snakes?’

They resembled diamondback rattlesnakes, minus the rattle. Most were two or three feet long, a couple — the fastest — were even bigger. All had a distinctive tiger-stripe pattern of black and gold scales and arrow-shaped heads, a feature common to the type of venomous snakes known as pit vipers. Pierce recalled the Nehushtan sculpture on the mountain above them. Maybe the story was only figurative, but the ‘fiery serpents’ mentioned in the Bible — Palestinian vipers — were a very real problem in the region.

The snakes were not moving very fast. In fact, even at a regular walking pace, Pierce and Fiona were already pulling away from the swarm, but unlike most wild animals, including snakes, which preferred to keep humans at a distance and attacked only when approached, these vipers were still coming, and appeared to be pissed off.

“That explosion must have cracked open their warrens and dumped them down here,” Pierce said, as they reached the domed chamber at the end of the passage.

“They’re between us and the exit,” Fiona said.

“Yeah.”

“We’re stuck down here. In a snake pit.”

“Yeah.”

“Got any ideas?”

“I’m working on it.” Pierce ran to the center of the room and stared up at the opening. “We’ve got to get up there.”

“It’s too high.”

“I’ll boost you up.”

Pierce bent over and laced his fingers together to form a step, but Fiona just stared at him. “Who’s going to boost you?”

“I’ll figure something out.” He glanced at the mouth of the tunnel, and his light revealed one of the vipers slithering out into the open. It was not alone. The creatures were still on the warpath. Pierce shook his joined hands. “Go!”

As Fiona stepped on his hands, he lifted her up, shoving her toward the opening. Even with the boost, her fingers just grazed the edge.

“On my shoulders,” Pierce grunted, keeping his eyes on the advancing snakes. “Hurry.”

Fiona planted one foot on his shoulder and stepped up. She wasn’t all that heavy, but her full weight pressing down on his collar bone nearly drove him to his knees. He gritted his teeth against the unexpected pain, and then, just like that, the pressure was gone. He looked up and saw her legs dangling down as she wormed herself up onto a concealed ledge.

There was no time to savor the minor victory. A snake, as long as Fiona was tall, was almost within striking distance. He danced back a few steps, even as more of the vipers slithered out of the passage.

He slid out of his backpack and swung it at the closest snake. Instead of retreating, it struck at the pack, sinking its fangs into the nylon. As the pack continued through the arc of the swing, Pierce could feel the sudden change. The pack was a good ten pounds heavier and shaking. The snake was still attached, its fangs snagged in the fabric. He heaved it away and quickly regretted it.

Now he had nothing with which to fend off the rest of the swarm.

FORTY-FOUR

Fiona kicked her legs and wriggled the rest of the way onto the ledge. From below, it had not been visible, but now she could see that it was the bottom landing of a narrow, spiral staircase that corkscrewed around the shaft.

As soon as she was up, she squirmed around so she could see the chamber below. Pierce was gone, driven away from the center by the advancing vipers. “Uncle George!”

“Fi. You’ve got to find a way out.” Pierce’s voice was faint, muffled by distance and the acoustics of the chamber. “Tell Cintia to contact Erik. You’ve got to find the Ark. And save Gus.”

She beat her fists against the stone landing, feeling helpless. There was no loose earth with which to form a golem, and she couldn’t think of any other way in which her limited ability with the Mother Tongue might be useful.

What she needed was a ladder or some rope.

Stairs, she thought. They had to lead somewhere, and maybe at the top, she would find something…anything…that might help Pierce escape the snake pit.

She scrambled to her feet and started ascending, bounding up three steps at a time until the burning in her legs slowed her to single steps. She kept going, refusing to stop for breath, circling around the stairwell again and again, until she started to feel dizzy. Even then she did not stop until, with no warning whatsoever, the stairs ended at a balcony that almost ringed the vertical shaft.

The surrounding walls were smooth, save for a protruding square of rock, about two feet on each side, framing a carved Templar cross, on the opposite side of the balcony. There seemed to be no reason for it to be there, so Fiona figured it was either the release mechanism for a secret door or a booby trap.

One hardly seemed worse than the other, so she ran to it and slammed both her fists against it.

The balcony lurched beneath her, then knocked her down.

“Damn it,” she muttered, and thought, Booby trap.

But then the floor stopped moving, and she saw that the stone block with the cross was now a good eight feet higher than it had been, and positioned right above an arched doorway leading out of the shaft.

Without pausing to consider what new perils might await her on the other side, Fiona charged through the door and found herself in another round, vaulted chamber. The walls were adorned with painted frescoes. The scenes were reminiscent of stained glass windows in a cathedral or Byzantine icons, though she didn’t give the artwork more than a cursory glance. At the opposite end, there was a block of carved stone, about waist high and twice as long, and behind that, several long tapestries covering the wall — black on top, white on the bottom, with red Templar crosses in the center.

The room was a chapel, a secret underground church that probably dated back to the crusades. It was no doubt built by the men who had discovered, and removed, the Ark of the Covenant.

No ladders, but the tapestries gave her an idea. Each was long enough to reach down to the floor of the snake pit.

She ran down the length of the chamber, circled the altar, and grabbed one of the enormous woven panels. She half-expected it to crumble to dust in her hands, but the dry environment of the sealed chapel had preserved the tapestry well. It tore free of the hooks from which it was suspended, but its unexpected weight bore her to the ground. She struggled to get her arms under it, but the woven fabric was so heavy, she could only lift one end.

The removal of the tapestry revealed another doorway, leading out of the apse and perhaps to another stairwell or secret passage. It probably led all the way to the surface, a hidden entrance somewhere on Mount Nebo, but Fiona paid no attention to the possible exit. Instead, she pulled the heavy tapestry behind her, heading for the door back to the staircase.

The woven curtain snagged on the rough floor, pulling her off balance once more. The utter futility of what she was trying to do crashed down on her like a wave. If she could not even lift the tapestry, how would she ever be able to hold it in place while Pierce climbed up? Was he even still alive?

She fell to her knees, sobbing.

“Fi!”

Pierce was standing in the doorway, breathing hard but smiling. She shoved the tapestry away, bounded across the intervening distance, and threw her arms around him.

“You made it! How?”

“The stairs came down. I thought you did that.”

Fiona realized that she actually had. The mechanism outside the chapel had done more than just reveal the hidden entrance. It had lowered the entire stairwell down eight feet to the floor of the lower chamber. She had saved Pierce without even realizing it.

She looked past him to the stairwell. “Can snakes climb steps?”

Pierce chuckled. “Maybe, but I think we’re safe for a little while.” He gave her a squeeze, then released her and moved into the chapel, scrutinizing the frescos.

Now that there was time for her to look at them, Fiona realized that she was looking at a visual record of the chamber’s discovery. The paintings on the right side showed an artist’s rendering of a man in a rough-looking garment with his eyes raised heavenward as if in prayer. Then the same man journeying into the desert at the head of a procession of men carrying large bundles. In the final scene, they were setting up what looked like a circus tent in a cave. The panels on the left side showed the story of how the Templars found the secret chamber.

Pierce stared at the last panel on the left, which depicted the same scene as on the opposite side, but with the addition of Templars kneeling before their swords, which were held in front of them like crosses. “This is where they found the Holy Tabernacle of Meeting.”

“It doesn’t show what happened next,” Fiona said. “Where did they take it?”

Pierce moved back to the first panel, which showed priests and Templar scholars perusing scrolls. “They found something that told them where to look. Maybe the same scrolls we read.” He moved to the next panel, which showed Templars, some on horseback, others on foot, carrying what looked like short walking sticks. One of the men was kneeling, with his cane lying on the ground before him, pointing toward the rising sun.

Pierce tapped the picture. “That rod, it’s too short to be a walking staff. I think it’s a measuring stick. Exactly one Sacred cubit. They calculated the correct length six hundred years before Isaac Newton.”

“How?”

Pierce shook his head. “There are several references to measuring the Temple in the Bible — the Revelation, the prophecies of Ezekiel and Zechariah. Maybe there was something left of the old Temple in Jerusalem that they were able to use as a baseline.”

He moved to the last panel, which showed the warrior-monks ringing the Tabernacle, praying before their upraised swords. “If they’d had the Tabernacle, they would have been able to measure it and work it out backward…” His voice trailed off, and then he turned to Fiona, his eyes dancing with excitement. “I know where the Ark is.”

FORTY-FIVE

Ask the Templars.

Augustina Gallo had wrestled with Pierce’s parting admonition for hours. She had pondered the message as Fallon’s men drove them to the airport in Amman, then dissected and parsed the words as Fallon’s private jet soared toward France, the only destination she could think to give him. Now, standing here at the north entrance to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, she hoped she had interpreted the message correctly.

Gallo had convinced Fallon to allow her Internet access aboard his plane, albeit with him looking over her shoulder. She was not an expert on the Templars by any means, which meant that before she could even begin to solve the mystery of what they had done with the Ark, she would first have to figure out who they really were.

There were two Templar histories. The generally accepted version began in 1119, when Hugues de Payens founded the order, and ended in 1307 with the arrest of the last grandmaster Jacques de Molay, the official dissolution of the order, and the seizure of all Templar assets. Despite being set against the backdrop of the Crusades, it was more a tale of shrewd business and political scheming than a war story. The Templars fought valiantly, sometimes brutally, but could not hold the Holy Lands against the forces of Saladin, the Sultan of the Levant. Their success derived, not from prowess in battle, but from an astute manipulation of both economic and religious power. That success attracted enemies far more destructive than Muslim armies.

Then there was the other history of the Templars. Pseudo-history to the doubters, true history to the believers. Some, though not all, held that the story began a century earlier than the official version, with the discovery of holy relics in Scotland. All agreed that it continued right up to the present, with Templar influence transforming secret societies like the Bavarian Illuminati and the Freemasons into powerful political and economic entities, all in pursuit of a New World Order. In this history, the Templars were both heroes and villains, guardians of secret scientific or occult knowledge, and diabolical puppet masters.

Gallo, a professional historian, knew all too well that the official version of history was rarely honest or completely accurate, but she lived by the same principles as a scientist — extraordinary claims required extraordinary proofs. And while she had seen some extraordinary claims proved true, she always started from a foundation of solid, reliable information. Pierce, knowing both her background and her temperament, would have expected her to start with research, but the more she read, the harder she found it to separate fact from fancy, real history from conspiracy theory.

Then it occurred to her what Pierce was trying to tell her.

“Chartres Cathedral,” she had announced. “That’s where we need to go.”

One of Fallon’s hired men, a brutish thug named Williams, made a rude joke about the name, but Gallo ignored him. “The Templars were involved in financing its construction. Its location has long possessed spiritual significance going back to pre-Christian times. If the Templars brought the Ark back to Europe, that’s the most logical place for them to put it.”

“And it’s still there?” Fallon asked, barely able to contain his eagerness.

“There’s only one way to know for sure.”

That had been enough to get them to the idyllic French town of Chartres, sixty miles from Paris. The church for which the town was world famous, was considered the best preserved Gothic cathedral in the world, having survived World War II almost completely intact. It had also survived the previous day’s earthquakes mostly intact, though a few areas of the exterior were cordoned off with yellow caution tape.

Gallo stared up at the ornately carved pillars of the north façade. Like all Gothic cathedrals and most Catholic churches worldwide, Chartres utilized a long cruciform design, with a nave divided into several bays, separated by pillars, and a transept crossing the nave, separating it from the apse. All of the facades were elaborately decorated, but the north entrance featured the element that had commanded the attention of Templar historians and Ark hunters for several decades.

“There,” she said, pointing to a pillar that showed what appeared to be a wheeled cart being pulled by robed figures. “That’s a representation of the Ark of the Covenant being brought from the Holy Land by the Templars. The inscription beneath it is Latin. HIC AMITITUR ARCHA CEDERIS. ‘Here things take their course. You are to work through the Ark.’”

Fallon nodded and rubbed his hands together. “Work through the Ark? How do we do that?”

“We have to go inside.” She started walking along the exterior, passing the impressive flying buttresses that extended out from the main structure like the skeletal ribs of an enormous leviathan. “There’s a labyrinth set into the floor of the nave. That’s sort of like a spiritual maze.”

“I know what a labyrinth is,” Fallon said.

“Well, it’s been proposed by some Ark hunters that the Ark is hidden on another dimensional plane, and if you walk the labyrinth through to the end, you will be able to step through into that other dimension.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t believe it’s the literal truth, but there are rumors of a secret tunnel under the labyrinth. I believe that we’re meant to walk it to find the entrance, or the means to unlock it. But I should warn you, a lot of people walk that labyrinth every day, and a lot of them are looking for the Ark. It won’t be easy.”

“For your sake, Dr. Gallo, and for your friends, I hope it’s easier than you think.”

She stopped, turned to him, and fixed him with a lethal stare. “I’m well aware of what’s at stake. You don’t need to keep reminding me.”

Fallon grunted and motioned for her to keep moving.

They came around to the west entrance and made their way inside. It was early evening, just after dusk, but the cathedral was busy with visitors. As at Mount Nebo, many people had turned to their faith to help them cope with the global earthquake crisis and the uncertainty of what might come next. Given the circumstances, it was probably an appropriate reaction.

She went inside and approached the font, dipped her fingers in, and crossed herself. Fallon stared at the basin for a moment, then did the same, looking almost embarrassed.

“You’re Catholic?”

“I’m Irish. What do you think?” He grimaced. “It’s been a while, though. I don’t really…you know…believe any of it.”

She raised an eyebrow, feigning indignation, then nodded in the direction of Williams and the other security contractors. “What about you guys?”

The men exchanged awkward glances but did not answer.

“Maybe they should stay here,” she told Fallon. “This is holy ground, after all.”

Fallon turned to his men. “We don’t need you in here. I don’t think Dr. Gallo will try anything, but just in case, keep an eye on the exits.”

The mercenaries seemed relieved, as if being in the church building made them uncomfortable. They headed back outside. Gallo started up the nave with Fallon right behind her. As they walked, she studied the carved relief images adorning the bay pillars and the majestic stained glass windows. “Too bad we didn’t get here before sunset. It would have been nice to see these windows lit up with natural light.”

“We’re not here for sightseeing.”

“No, but if my theory is correct, the windows hold the secret of finding the Ark.”

That got Fallon’s attention. “How?”

“Each window depicts a scene from the Bible.” She pointed to one window on the north side of the nave. “That’s Noah and his sons building the first Ark.”

“The one from the Flood.”

“Exactly.” She pointed down at the dark pattern on the lighter-colored floor tiles, tracing it with a finger through the first few turns, as the path wandered back and forth across the nave. The labyrinth was contained in a circle, at least forty feet in diameter. “When we walk the labyrinth, we’ll be looking at the windows and the reliefs in a very specific order. I think that the scenes will form a code, like a combination lock, that will open the secret crypt under the cathedral.”

Fallon’s earlier eagerness returned in full force. “That’s awesome. How did you figure it out?”

She shrugged. “You should take video of your walkthrough. That way we don’t have to keep walking it over and over again until we figure it out.”

Fallon liked this idea even better. He took out his mobile phone and held it up as he followed Gallo down the well-trod path.

The labyrinth was not a maze, with pathway junctions and dead ends, but a single path that never crossed itself. It wound around and around in an elaborate pattern within the circle, until reaching the center. Walking a labyrinth was a spiritual journey, a physical meditation. Some even considered it a transformative experience, like a baptism. Gallo had a similar hope for her labyrinth walk.

The path started off straight, heading toward the center, but then just before the halfway point, it turned left and began a clockwise curl. After only a quarter rotation, it doubled back in the first of many hairpin turns, returning almost to the original line. It turned left again and continued toward the center. Just before reaching the center, it turned left again, skirting the ultimate goal without actually reaching it.

Gallo and Fallon were not the only ones walking the labyrinth, and while the pattern did not allow for actual collisions, the narrow path meant they were brushing past other devotees, some further along, others just beginning. She studied the expressions on the faces of the faithful, noted the quivering of their lips as they prayed silently, and wondered how they would react when she and Fallon reached the center. Then, she focused her attention on the path ahead, barely noticing the beautiful windows above, and kept her breathing slow and steady.

Ask the Templars, Pierce had said. At first, Gallo had assumed that he was telling her to look into the accepted history of the Templars and their actions during the Crusades, or perhaps that she was to focus on the final chapter in their tale — the fragmentation of the order, and what happened afterward. But as she read about the trial and the persecution of Jacques de Molay and the other senior Templars, of the relentless torture of the Inquisition, and the false confessions designed to mislead their enemies with wild stories of treasure ships and bizarre pagan rituals, another thought occurred to her.

Ask the Templars.

She had a pretty good idea how they would have answered.

By design, the end of the labyrinth walk came with little warning. The path brought her to a spot adjacent to where she had made the first turn, only instead of turning left, she turned right and waked straight into the six-petal flower-shape at the center of the labyrinth. There were a few people already occupying the space, heads bowed and lost in the exultation of completing their symbolic journey. Gallo stepped aside and allowed Fallon, his mobile phone held up and recording every step, to enter the center.

“Now what?” he asked, stepping close and keeping his voice low.

“Now, you see God,” she replied, and slammed her right knee up into his crotch.

Fallon curled around the point of impact like a worm on a fishhook, unable to breathe or cry out. As he crumpled to the floor, she plucked the phone from his grasp then knelt beside him as if trying to offer comfort.

She raised her eyes to meet the questioning stares of her fellow travelers. “He will be fine,” she said, in passable French. “The spirit is upon him.”

The explanation was evidently good enough. No one paid them any further attention.

She bent lower over Fallon’s still-writhing form and whispered in his ear. “First, I’m going to call the police and tell them that I’ve just escaped from a kidnapper. While I wait for them to get here, I’m going to call the authorities in Jordan and have them dig George and Fiona out. If you leave now, and take your hired goons with you, you just might be able to get out of the country before I tell them your name.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Better get moving.”

Once out of the labyrinth, she ducked into the south transept and looked down at the phone, which was still in video mode. She thumbed the button to stop recording and opened the phone function, but she did not call the police.

After the first ring, Dourado’s wary voice sounded in her ear. “Cerberus Group.”

“Cintia, it’s me.”

“Augustina! I mean, Dr. Gallo. Thank God.”

Gallo smiled. Dourado was always so very formal. “Listen. I need you to—”

“Let me go first,” Dourado said, cutting her off. “I probably know more than you do. Dr. Pierce and Fiona are safe. They got out. They’re heading your way. Are you safe?”

Gallo sagged against the wall, the adrenaline of her escape draining away, leaving her feeling weak in the knees. “Safe?”

“Does Fallon still have you?”

She shook her head, momentarily forgetting that she was on the phone. “I got away from him.”

“Good. I tracked Fallon’s flight to France. Dr. Pierce will be there soon. Do you want to talk to him? I’ll patch you through.”

Before Gallo could answer the question, she heard Pierce’s voice. “Gus? You’re safe?”

“I should be asking you.”

He laughed. “You didn’t really think a hole in the ground would keep us down for long?”

“No. I mean, I hoped you’d find a way out.”

“Where are you? Are you safe?”

“I think so.” She glanced around, afraid that Fallon had ignored her warning and sent his hired thugs to grab her again, but there was no sign of them. “I’m at Chartres Cathedral.”

“Chartres? What made you decide to go there?”

“I figured out what you were trying to tell me.” She related her plan to trick Fallon into lowering his guard so that she could escape with his phone.

“You got all that from what I said?” There was a hint of awe in Pierce’s voice.

“What did you actually mean?”

He chuckled. “Follow the Templar trail. Find the Ark. But I like your way better. Besides. Now I know where the Ark really is.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s in London. I know I told you to ask the Templars, but that’s only the beginning of the story.”

FORTY-SIX

Ishiro Tanaka was a patient man. He had been waiting his whole life for this, for his chance to stop the endless cycle of suffering and death. Now the goal was in sight. He could wait a little longer.

Still, he was not immune to the frustration that came with being stranded.

Twelve hours after leaving Tomorrowland, his plane had touched down at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. International air traffic was still a jumbled mess, but there were flights to be had for the right price, and the Children of Durga no longer had any reason to be thrifty. Twelve more hours and he was still there, stuck in the Windy City, and the prospects of traveling on any time soon were not looking good.

The West Coast was a wreck. Portland and Seattle were still digging out. Anchorage had been leveled. The only aircraft going west of the Rockies were military, carrying relief workers and supplies, and that did not seem likely to change any time soon.

Durga had promised to provide a way for him to continue on to the goal, but as a physicist, Tanaka was all too familiar with the property of inertia. He had lost his momentum, and now it was going to take an extraordinary amount of energy to get moving again.

Another tedious hour ticked by. He sat in his hotel room, a few miles from the airport, watching the news coverage with a mixture of horror and satisfaction. The suffering galled him, but thousands had already been freed from the anguish of the slow death called life, and that was his doing. Soon, very soon, the misery of the survivors would also be at an end.

His phone began vibrating on the night table, signaling an incoming text message from Durga. He snatched it up and read the message. It was not the news he had been hoping for.

Tanaka wasn’t sure why Durga was sharing this news with him. There wasn’t anything he could do to help now. Before he could articulate a question, the phone buzzed again.

“And you’re telling me this why?” he muttered, but then he tapped in a more thoughtful reply.

Was there? He recalled the conversation in the Geneva safehouse a day earlier, when Pierce’s people had trusted him with their plan to find some ancient relic made from the same meta-material as the Roswell fragment and the Black Knight.

A sun chariot from some Greek fairy tale?

It had sounded ludicrous to him at the time, but the same could also be said about the Black Knight satellite and the ancient alien explorers who had probably left it behind.

Durga did not respond for several minutes, and Tanaka thought perhaps the conversation was over. Then another text arrived, with an accompanying location link for a U.S. Air National Guard facility in Peoria, Illinois, a three-hour drive from Chicago. The message read:

He was still processing this information when another text came through.

FORTY-SEVEN

Lazarus returned to the grounds of Our Lady Mary of Zion before dusk, but he did not approach the cathedral. Instead, he took a stroll around the outer perimeter. He wore a red and yellow dashiki suit, with matching sokoto drawstring trousers and a black brimless kufi cap. He wasn’t sure if the ensemble, which had been purchased at a tourist gift shop, would make him stand out or blend in. Ethiopia was an ethnically diverse country, and his Persian complexion was just dark enough that he could pass for an Abyssinian — someone of Habesha ancestry. Ultimately, he didn’t care if he was noticed or pegged as a visitor, so long as they paid more attention to the outlandish outfit than they did to the man wearing it.

As the sun dropped behind the cathedral, he did a quick 360 degree check and then slipped into a wooded area near the southeastern corner of the structure’s foundation. One corner of the Chapel of the Tablets extended out beyond the fence separating the church from the outside world, just forty yards away.

Once concealed, he slipped out of the dashiki, which covered his jeans and a black hoodie, and then crouched down to wait for darkness. He waited a full hour, barely moving at all, then another, watching people come and go, or simply passing by on the street. Some carried candles and oil lamps, others bore smoky torches. After three motionless hours, he checked his watch and rose to his feet, although he did not step out from his hiding place. Stiffness wasn’t a problem thanks to his regenerative capabilities, but he stretched anyway, cracking his knuckles and then his cervical vertebrae, in anticipation of the go-signal.

It came just thirty seconds later, a harsh explosion. Sounding more like the report of a mortar or RPG launch than something mundane like a car backfiring or a big firecracker. It was in fact the latter, a firecracker about the size of an M-80, with a makeshift time delay fuse and a slight aftermarket modification to increase the volume of the detonation. Carter had dropped the lit firecracker a block away eight minutes previously. If she was following the plan, she was already long gone.

A few lights came on inside the church complex and a few brave souls ventured out to satisfy their curiosity about the noise. Lazarus also spotted a policeman emerging from a concealed watch-post, just outside the church grounds, to investigate the disturbance. When nothing more happened, everyone seemed to lose interest. The lights went out, and the police officer returned to his guard post.

Lazarus waited another twenty seconds, then made his move.

He stole along the edge of the wall, crossing the forty yards to the corner of the Chapel of the Tablets in four seconds. He vaulted up and over the fence like a parkour master, dropped to the ground on the far side, and pressed himself against the rough brick exterior of the Chapel. He paused there only a moment, just long enough to make sure that he had not been noticed, then kept going. The door was on the north wall, just a few steps away.

It opened with no resistance.

Lazarus moved inside with the same decisive swiftness he had once used when conducting military raids. He doubted very much that the lone monk assigned to the lifetime position of guardian would be lurking in the corner with an AK-47, but that didn’t mean the venture was risk free. If he was spotted and the alarm was sounded, getting out of Ethiopia would be tricky. If it happened before he was able to verify that the Ark inside the chapel was a fake, it would all be for naught.

He moved inside and closed the door behind him. The interior was dark and still. He waited a few seconds, listening, breathing, tasting the air for any sign of trouble, before clicking on a small disposable flashlight. He kept the light covered with one hand, allowing a sliver of illumination to slip through his fingers. It was enough for him to navigate the interior and make out a few details.

The chapel’s layout was simple, a large open room surrounding a tall square enclosure in the middle. The walls of the enclosure were adorned with brightly painted panels, depicting scenes from the Bible and the story of how the Ark came to Axum. Lazarus could not fathom why the builders of the chapel would decorate a room that only a few men would ever be permitted to see.

Three sides of the enclosure had shuttered windows. The fourth wall had a door, screened off behind a partition of colored glass. Lazarus ducked around the partition and approached the door with the same assertiveness he had shown entering the building.

The closed door reminded him of Schroedinger’s Cat, the old thought experiment used to explain competing alternate realities in quantum physics. While the door was closed, there were two potential realities occupying the same space on the other side. In one reality, the enclosure contained the highly sought-after Ark of the Covenant, the actual relic from the Bible, imbued with supernatural powers. In another reality, the enclosure contained a forgery. Yet, it was not a case of one or the other. While the door remained closed, the actual truth known only to the guardian monk, the two realities existed simultaneously. The Ark was there for those who believed it was, and it was not for those who did not believe.

Once he entered the enclosure, one of those realities would cease to exist.

Lazarus did not hesitate. He was certain about which reality would survive, but not so certain that he did not harbor a small sliver of doubt. He and Carter were only here because of that sliver, that remote possibility that could not be completely dismissed.

What if that reality survived? What if he found the actual, real Ark?

Sneaking into the Chapel of the Tablets was one thing. Trying to sneak out, while carrying a holy relic that probably weighed hundreds of pounds, not to mention possessing the power to strike anyone touching it dead, would be another matter.

Still, if that happened, at least the question of the Ark’s final disposition would be resolved. They could work out the rest of the details later.

He opened the door and saw it. A chest, covered in shiny yellow metal that gleamed as it caught the flashlight’s reflection. It looked like pictures he had seen, right down to the angels covering the lid with their outstretched wings.

But that did not mean it was the real Ark. There was only one way to determine which reality would survive. As with Schroedinger’s Cat, he would have to open the box. If it was the true Ark, he would probably be struck dead, and given its supernatural properties, there was no guarantee that his regenerative abilities would bring him back. The wrath of God could be tricky that way.

Without hesitating, he stepped into the enclosure, reached out both hands, and took hold of the covering angels.

Nothing. No electric shock. No release of divine retribution.

He lifted the lid, and immediately knew that the metal covering the carved angels was not gold, but something lighter and harder. Polished brass in all likelihood.

One reality blinked out of existence. The Ethiopian Ark of the Covenant was not the real deal.

Time to go.

He set the lid back in place and clicked off his light. The open layout of the chapel would be easy to navigate in the dark. No sense risking discovery now, with the mission almost complete.

He exited the enclosure, circled around to the front door, opened it…and froze in his tracks.

Abuna Mateos stood just outside, flanked on either side by old men in priestly vestments. They all held burning candles, which cast just enough light upon their faces to reveal a hint of disappointment, but not a trace of surprise.

None of the men were armed, at least not that Lazarus could see, and they did not appear poised to attack or to attempt subduing him until the authorities could be summoned. They just stood there, blocking his escape route.

Lazarus considered pushing past them and bolting for the wall, but that wouldn’t get him out of the country. Before he could make up his mind, Mateos spoke.

“Are you satisfied, now that you have seen for yourself?”

Lazarus sensed he was being cryptic. Did Mateos know that the Ark in the chapel was a forgery? Did any of the men standing before him? And if they did not, what right did he have to burst the bubbles of their faith? “You could say that,” he answered, equally vague.

“I knew that you would come.”

“Was I that obvious?”

Mateos smiled. “I saw it in a vision. The Lord told me to expect you.”

Lazarus had no response to that. “I’m finished here,” he said, keeping his tone firm but diplomatic. “I won’t tell anyone what I saw in there.”

He hoped the subtext was clear to the older man. Try to stop me, and I’ll tell the world.

Mateos, however, just shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

FORTY-EIGHT

The pain subsided to a dull ache after about half an hour, but Fallon’s dark rage showed no sign of abating.

That bitch, he fumed.

Even more powerful than the pain and anger was the fear. He had abducted Gallo. Taken her across international borders. Buried Pierce and his young protégé alive. In the heat of the moment, he had not even stopped to think about the potential consequences of these actions, but now he was terrified.

How am I going to get out of this?

The answer disturbed him.

Kill her. Kill them all.

He couldn’t think of another way to avoid rotting in a jail cell.

But first, a strategic withdrawal. He had limped from the nave of Chartres Cathedral and found Williams waiting outside. If Gallo had left, she had done so unnoticed. Fallon couldn’t take the chance that her threat to call the police was a bluff, but he left Williams and the Alpha Dog mercenaries with instructions to keep watching, and headed for the airport, just in case.

Before getting out of the car to board the plane, he called Williams on a borrowed mobile phone. “Any sign of her?”

The mere act of talking sent a fresh wave of pain through his groin.

“Negative,” Williams replied. “Maybe she slipped our net. But no sign of the police, either. I think she was yanking your chain about that. They don’t want cops involved any more ’n you do.”

The mercenary was probably right about that.

“We can go in,” the man went on. “Sweep the place for her.”

He considered the offer, trying to ignore the pulsating ache between his legs. If they tried to grab Gallo in public it would only make matters worse, and they would be no closer to finding the Ark of the Covenant. The move against Pierce in Jordan had been premature, but his original plan was still sound. Let Gallo and Pierce find the Ark, and then take it away from them.

But if he was going to pull it off, he would need more than just a quartet of hired military rejects.

“No,” he told Williams. “Let’s hold off on that. Come back to the airport. I’ve got a better idea.”

FORTY-NINE

The revelation had come to Pierce in the Templar chapel, deep beneath Mount Nebo. Pierce had contacted Dourado, and she had started tracking Fallon even before his plane left the Amman airport. When Gallo had escaped from Fallon at Chartres Cathedral, the Cerberus jet was already in French airspace. Less than an hour later, the three of them were together again, exhausted but no worse for wear.

The clock was still ticking, but now Pierce knew where they needed to go. He had explained his epiphany during the short hop across the English Channel.

“The Templars came to Jerusalem looking for the Ark. They had the same scrolls and scriptures that led us to Jeremiah’s secret hiding place. What they didn’t have, at least not until they set up shop on the Temple Mount, was a standard of measurement. The true length of the Sacred cubit.

“The fresco we found showed the Templars using a measuring stick. Historically, the length of the cubit was always understood to be the approximate distance from a man’s elbow to fingertip. Roughly eighteen inches. And that’s the figure they would have been most familiar with. It’s a more or less constant ratio of one cubit to average height — not quite one-fourth. Back then, the average height for a man was about five and half feet, but with better nutrition, the average is now almost six feet. As we know, the Sacred cubit is just over twenty-five inches. Based on the one-fourth rule, that could suggest the Sacred cubit was derived from a race of people with an average height of about one hundred inches — over eight feet.”

“Giants,” Gallo said. “Like Goliath and the Rephaim.”

“I know about Goliath,” said Dourado, who was listening in on speaker phone. “But who or what are the Rephaim?”

“Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. Depending on how you interpret the cubit, Goliath was at least nine feet tall, but he wasn’t just an outlier. Goliath belonged to a tribe known as the Rephaim, who were known for being giants.” Gallo turned to Fiona. “That name translates to: ‘the people whose speech sounds like buzzing.’”

Fiona caught on. “They knew the Mother Tongue.”

Gallo gave a knowing nod. “It’s possible. They were descended from an earlier tribe called the Anakim — sons of Anak. The Hebrews encountered them on the edge of the Promised Land. The ancient Greek word Anax, from which Anak is probably derived, is used to indicate royalty but also divine power. Both the Rephaim and the Anakim are associated with ancient ancestors living in the sheol, the Hebrew word for the pit or underworld. And here we come full circle, the Rephaim were descendants of the Nephilim.”

“And the Sacred cubit was their measurement,” Pierce said. “There was zero chance of the Templars figuring that out. To find the precise location where Jeremiah concealed the Ark, they would have needed to know the exact length of the Sacred cubit, and that’s a calculation they were able to make from something they found on the Temple Mount.”

“That makes sense,” Gallo said, “but how does it tell us where the Ark went after they found it?”

Pierce answered with a question. “How do we know the length of the Sacred cubit?”

“Cintia told us,” Fiona said.

“And I learned about it from the writings of Sir Isaac Newton,” Dourado put in.

“So, how did Newton figure it out?”

As Fiona and Gallo exchanged a look, Dourado answered. “According to the paper he wrote, it was by researching ancient writings.”

“That’s one possible answer,” Pierce said, grinning. “But how did he arrive at the correct figure, when all those earlier scholars couldn’t get it right? And remember, there was no uniform standard of measurement until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, no way to communicate what those distances meant.”

Gallo grasped what he was trying to say. “You think Isaac Newton got his measurements from the Ark?”

“It’s the perfect standard of measurement. The Bible gives the exact dimensions of the Ark in cubits. Newton’s calculation was the basis for his theories on light, and probably everything else, too. He invented calculus just so he could understand the significance of the Sacred cubit, and that opened his eyes to the laws of gravity and motion. The Sacred cubit was the key to unlocking all of that because it came from the Originators…” He smiled at Gallo. “…aka, the Nephilim, a technologically advanced alie — err, species.”

“‘If I have seen further than others,’” Gallo murmured, reciting one of Newton’s most enduring quotes. “‘It is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ He wasn’t just talking about intellectual giants, was he?”

She blew out her breath with a low whistle. “Well, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard today. Connect the dots for me. How do we get from the Templars to Sir Isaac Newton?”

“I don’t have it all worked out,” Pierce admitted. “Cintia, maybe you can fact-check me on some of this. But here’s what I think happened: The Templars found the Ark and held on to it for a couple of centuries, believing that they would one day be able to rebuild Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. When they learned of King Philip’s plot against them, the Ark was the one secret they had to keep, so they confessed to the wildest crimes imaginable and spun tales of treasure ships, all to hide the one thing that was more important to them than their reputation or even their lives. They went underground, just like all the conspiracy theories say, creating secret societies that would protect the Ark and preserve the wisdom and knowledge of the Templars through the ages.”

“Kind of like us?” Fiona mused.

“Except they were holding off until all those old prophecies about the Jews returning to Mount Zion and rebuilding the Temple came true. They hid their secrets in rituals and stories. Only the highest level initiates would ever know the whole truth.”

“You’re talking about the Freemasons,” Gallo said. “Was Newton a Mason?”

“Let me check,” Dourado said. “Okay, it looks like the first lodge in London opened in 1717, ten years before Newton died… Oh.”

“Oh?” Pierce prompted.

“I’m sending you a picture. It’s the seal of the London Grand Lodge.”

The phone buzzed as the image came via text message. Pierce tapped on the screen to open the file.

“Is that…?” Gallo started.

“I think so.” Pierce zoomed in on the feature of the seal that he suspected had caught everyone’s attention.

“That’s the Ark!” Fiona said.

“It makes sense,” Pierce explained. “The Masons see themselves as the spiritual heirs to Hiram, the architect of Solomon’s temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Ark and anything related to the Temple is of paramount importance, symbolically at least.”

“Maybe the chicken came before the egg,” Fiona suggested. “Maybe they got interested in this stuff because Isaac Newton asked them to protect the Ark.”

“It’s not that crazy,” Pierce admitted. “And a lot of Masons consider Newton to be an influence, if not a member. What we do know for certain is that Newton was an early member and president of the Royal Society.”

“More secret brotherhoods,” Fiona said, rolling her eyes.

“The Royal Society isn’t a secret,” Pierce said. “It’s the world’s oldest and most esteemed scientific organization.”

“The Royal Society was founded in 1660,” Dourado said, summarizing the result of another Internet search. “But it traces back to an earlier group of scientists who called themselves ‘the Invisible College.’ The idea for the Invisible College came from a reference to ‘Salomon’s House’ in the book New Atlantis, by Sir Francis Bacon. It was an early blueprint for a research institute.”

“Once again, life imitates art,” Gallo said. “And who better to take as a namesake than King Solomon, the wisest man ever to have lived?”

“Solomon’s House might also refer to the Temple,” Pierce added.

“You might be right about that,” Dourado said. “Bacon was known to be a student of Templar lore. He was also involved in creating the King James Version of the Bible, and he consulted with Dr. John Dee on the creation of the statute measurement system.”

“Isn’t he also the guy that wrote the Voynich Manuscript?” Fiona asked.

“You’re thinking of Roger Bacon,” Pierce said. “No relation.”

She grinned. “Other than crispy deliciousness.”

Pierce shook his head in a display of dismay, and then turned to Gallo. “There’s your connection. The Templars relocated the Ark to London. France wasn’t safe for them anymore. The Templars already had a strong presence in England, and King Edward sheltered them from the worst of the persecution. England and France were constantly at war, and Edward wasn’t about to do Philip any favors. What better place to hide a secret Templar revival?

“Eventually, Edward was forced to comply with the wishes of the Church, and all Templar holdings were given to the Hospitallers, but they had plenty of time to cover their tracks. And when Henry VIII broke with Rome, he kicked the Hospitallers out as well. Which brings us to Sir Francis Bacon, the Royal Society, and to Isaac Newton.

“Newton was as much a man of faith as he was a man of science, but his discoveries were part of the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the beginning of the end for universal acceptance of a divine origin for the Universe. I would guess that, as intellectual philosophies gained greater acceptance, the idea of holding onto religious relics like the Ark would have seemed a bit quaint. That probably contributed to the creation of the Masonic brotherhood, a way for men of faith and science to square the circle. Some of the Founding Fathers were both Masons and Deists — hybrid theistic rationalists. Just having the Ark would be an anchor for their spiritual beliefs.”

“Dots connected,” Gallo said. “Which just leaves one question. Where’s the Ark today? You said you knew where it was.”

“What’s the first rule of real estate?” Pierce asked. “Location, location, location. The Temple Mount was chosen for a specific reason, an alignment of geomagnetic forces that even Solomon probably didn’t understand, but was somehow connected to the Originator power grid. The cave where Jeremiah hid the Ark was calculated using the Sacred cubit and the location of the Temple. I would be willing to bet that the Templars used a similar calculation when deciding where to hide the Ark in London. A sacred place they would have identified right from the beginning: Temple Church.”

“Of course,” Dourado exclaimed. “It was in The DaVinci Code! I can’t believe I forgot that.”

Pierce winced at the reference but refrained from commenting.

Temple Church was, as its name indicated, a Church built by the Templars. The site, chosen by the first Templar Grandmaster, Hugues de Payens, was already sacred ground, albeit in a pagan tradition, having once been the location of a Roman temple in the ancient city of Londinium. The church itself was round, rather than cruciform, an architectural signature of Templar churches, just like the chapel Pierce and Fiona had discovered beneath Mount Nebo. The Templars had outgrown Temple Church, and built a city in Hertfordshire to the north of London, but Temple Church continued to serve an important role in Templar operations as the English royal treasury.

Even on a good day, getting to Temple Church was a bit of a challenge, requiring a local’s knowledge of the narrow pedestrian throughways and back streets. At midnight on the day following the biggest disaster to hit the city since the Ragnarok Event, it was an ordeal comparable to escaping the subterranean world beneath Arkaim. Although London had suffered only minor earthquake damage, the subsequent nine-foot-high tsunami wave had flooded low-lying areas near the river as far inland as Battersea Bridge. The affected area included the Temple district, where Temple Church was located. The church itself was high and dry, but everything south of the Strand was barricaded off to vehicle traffic, and despite Dourado’s best efforts to find them a route, it took forty minutes of wandering to find an approach.

“Reminds me of Castel Sant’Angelo,” Fiona remarked, as they crouched in the shadows, checking to make sure the coast was clear.

“You’re not the first to notice that,” Pierce said. Indeed, the rugged church bore more than a passing resemblance to the papal fortress and one-time prison structure that concealed the entrance to the Cerberus Group’s underground headquarters. “It’s the round design. Most churches are cross-shaped, but Templar churches were always round, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.”

They remained in hiding for a few more minutes before making the final push to the entrance on the south side of the church. The locked door posed no great challenge to Fiona, who was almost as adept at picking locks as she was at creating golems, and they slipped into the deserted nave.

Pierce swept the surrounding area with his light. The round nave to their left contained the stone burial effigies for which the church had become famous. To the right was the more traditionally Gothic choir and chancel.

“Now what?” Fiona whispered.

Pierce had hoped that the proximity of the Ark would trigger some kind of reaction to which Fiona would be attuned, but that wasn’t happening. He felt guilty asking her, yet again, if she sensed anything. Scanning with ground penetrating radar was also out of the question. He had no intention of going back to the snake pit underneath Mount Nebo to retrieve the lost Groundshark unit.

“We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Pierce said. “Look everywhere.”

“For what?” said Gallo.

“A secret door. The entrance to an underground crypt.”

“There isn’t a crypt,” Dourado said, her voice audible only through the synced Bluetooth devices they were all using.

“This church used to be the Royal Treasury. There has to be more than meets the eye here.”

Gallo cast a dubious eye into the nave. “I’m sure we’re not the first visitors to come in here rapping on the walls hoping to find some hidden Templar secret.”

“Well, we’re just going to have to look in the one place they didn’t. Cintia, try to dig up whatever information you can on this place. Maybe there’s some old blueprints or something in the historical record that might steer us in the right direction. The older, the better.”

“On it.”

As the three of them fanned out, moving to different corners of the church looking for some irregularity that might hint at the location of a hidden passage, Dourado began recounting details from the historical record. Most of the early information focused more on the Templars and the disposition of the property once they were gone, but after the Great Fire of 1666, history began paying attention to the building itself.

“The fire was put out, right outside Temple Church,” Dourado said. “What’s kind of unusual is that, even though the Church wasn’t damaged in the fire and even though he had thirty other churches to rebuild, the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, decided to refurbish Temple Church anyway.”

“Christopher Wren,” Pierce said. “He was also a President of the Royal Society.”

“Yes, about twenty years before Sir Isaac Newton. He was close friends with Edmund Halley, and it was a discussion they had that prompted Newton to develop his calculations to explain orbital mechanics. And like Newton, Wren is often linked to the Freemasons, though it’s hard to say if he was actually a member of the brotherhood.”

“What kind of changes did Wren make?”

“Mostly to the interior. The altar backpiece is his design.”

Pierce turned and shone his light toward the far end of the chancel, illuminating a series of carved wooden panels — the official term for it was a reredo—which displayed the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s prayer.

“Wren’s modifications were controversial,” Dourado continued, “and in 1841, most of them were undone in an attempt to make the church look more authentic. During the Blitz, a firebomb destroyed the roof and the organ, so they had to renovate again after the war. Wren’s altar was taken out of mothballs and reinstalled.”

“So, anything Wren might have done back in the seventeenth century,” Gallo said, “would have been exposed during the Victorian renovation or the restoration after the War.”

“Unless the architects were in on it.” Pierce moved back into the nave. He played his light on the stone figures arranged on the floor and positioned behind ankle-high iron rails. “Cintia, what was that you said about the crypt?”

“That there isn’t one. When they repaired the damage from the German bombing, they found no evidence of burials or a crypt under the Church. That’s how we know the stone knights in the nave are just effigies and not actual tomb markers.”

“What else do we know about these effigies?”

“There are nine effigies and what appears to be a stone casket cover in the spot where a tenth effigy would have gone. Five of them are attributed to actual people, the other four are unknown. The effigies were damaged by the bombing, but there are casts of them taken from before the war in the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

Pierce noted that all but two of the carved figures had their legs crossed, which was a common burial tradition for Crusader knights. “Which ones belonged to Templars?”

“None of them. At least, not the five that have been identified. They were supporters of the order but they never took the vows.”

Pierce examined each effigy in turn, taking note of their layout. Eight of the effigies were located within the inner circle of pillars supporting the ceiling vault, four on each side, arranged in a two-by-two formation. The heads were pointing west, feet positioned toward east, in the direction of the choir, with just enough space between each to create a cross. Further out, on either side, were the last two markers, including the one that lacked an effigy.

He returned to the center, turning slowly, looking for the pattern. “Why does this look familiar?”

Then he saw it and barked a laugh. Fiona came around to stand beside him. “What are you seeing?”

“We’re standing in a circle,” he said, raising his arms and turning around. “A circle. Keep that image in your head.”

He moved outside the inner circle, to the back of the nave and stood looking across the four effigies to the north, with one arm raised, pointing east. “Now. Imagine a straight line passing right through there.” After allowing a moment for this to sink in, he moved a few steps to the right and did the same over the effigies to the south.

A circle overlaying parallel lines.

The sigil of Hercules.

“The Herculean Society,” Gallo murmured.

“Coincidence?” Fiona asked.

George shrugged. “Could be.”

But even as she said it, a loud scraping sound filled the nave, reverberating between the ceiling arches like a sustained musical note. Pierce turned toward the source of the noise and saw the tenth marker, the one without a knight, sinking into the floor.

FIFTY

Pierce glanced at Fiona. She shook her head. Something had triggered the secret trap door, but it wasn’t anything she had done. She crept past the effigies and shone her light into the narrow opening. Only part of the casket cover was still visible. After dropping a few feet, it had slid to the side, revealing a narrow flight of stone steps, facing west as they descended into nothingness.

“Somebody knows we’re here,” Gallo said. “So, do we go down the rabbit hole?”

“The Ark is down there,” Pierce replied. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

He took a tentative step into the revealed passage, then another. When his head dipped below the level of the floor, Gallo gestured for Fiona to go next.

The opening was narrow, forcing her to turn sideways to get her shoulders through. The air rising up from below was cool and damp, and a musty smell filled her nostrils. The floor at the bottom of the steps glistened with moisture, but the passage beyond was not flooded. Pierce was already moving down the tunnel, and she hastened to catch up to him.

The passage followed a straight line for about a hundred yards before ending at a simple wooden door, slightly ajar. Soft light filtered through the opening, and a sweet smell, like pipe tobacco, cut the dank mildew of the tunnel.

Pierce paused there until Fiona and Gallo caught up, and then he pushed the door open wide.

What lay beyond bore only a slight resemblance to the round nave of Temple Church, and it did not look at all like a thirteenth century burial crypt. The area into which they stepped was round — an open semi-circle — and approximately the same width, with pillars supporting groin vaults overhead. The similarities ended there. Instead of a rustic church building with worn and damaged stone carvings and appointments, the chamber here was smooth and refined, with exquisitely worked marble and panels of polished wood. The floor was a chessboard pattern of polished white and black tiles. The walls were adorned with royal blue curtains, pulled back to reveal portraits, and relics on shelves and in display cases. The back of the door through which they had entered matched the décor, so that when closed, it would be almost indistinguishable. Beyond the door, the chamber stretched out into an enormous hall like the ballroom of a Renaissance-era palace. The far end of the hall, about fifty feet from where they stood, was draped in a dark curtain that stretched all the way across the room, though Fiona could see a narrow gap on either end. The most striking difference of all however, and the only reason she could discern any of the similarities and differences, was the fact that this room was illuminated with artificial light. Each of the elegant support columns sported an understated wall sconce of brushed brass and frosted glass.

“This is a Masonic lodge,” Pierce said. “The checkerboard floor is a Masonic symbol for the duality of nature. Opposing forces. Light and dark. Good and evil.”

“Not a big surprise,” Gallo said. “We suspected their involvement, after all.”

“They opened the door for us,” Fiona whispered, even though it wasn’t necessary to do so. “Is there a connection between the Masons and the Herculean Society?”

“None that I’m aware of,” Pierce said.

“Then it’s high time you were brought up to date.”

The unfamiliar voice — male, older, with a British accent — echoed in the hall. The rhythmic tapping of footsteps filled the space, and then the man who had spoken stepped into view.

Older, in his seventies, with a mane of swept-back white hair, he stood tall and took long strides, quickly crossing the distance to join them. Aside from his dignified black suit, he was attired with a short, blue and white apron, emblazoned with the distinctive square and compass sigil of the Masonic brotherhood. He strode right up to Pierce and offered his hand.

“How do you do?” he said, his expression serious but friendly. “I am Clive Chillingsworth.”

Pierce introduced the others, utilizing formal titles and surnames only — Fiona was introduced as ‘Miss Sigler’—then he added, “We’re with the Cerberus Group, an independent research organization.”

“Is that a fact?” Chillingsworth replied, raising an eyebrow.

Fiona, sensing their shared wariness, pushed ahead. “You opened the passage, didn’t you? Were you expecting us?”

The man swung his gaze toward her. “In a manner of speaking. Forgive me, it’s difficult to know where to begin.”

“Once upon a time…” Fiona prompted.

“Fi,” Pierce admonished, but then added. “She’s right though. We followed some pretty obscure clues to get here, and now you’re telling us that we were expected? What did you mean by that?”

Chillingsworth waved a hand, gesturing to their surroundings. “The Grand Lodge of London was dedicated three hundred years ago, and for that entire time, we have been the keepers of ancient and secret wisdom. I know how trite that must sound, but it happens to be the truth. Come, allow me to show you.”

He turned and started back down the checkerboard floor. Pierce followed, but before they had crossed even half the length of the hall, he let out a gasp. “That’s it. That’s the Tabernacle.”

Fiona now saw that the curtain was a long piece of fabric, woven of bright red, purple and blue threads, embroidered with shimmering gold angles, draped over a concealed structure, at least twenty feet high and just as wide.

“This is the real thing, isn’t it?” Pierce went on. “The actual Tabernacle created by Moses during the Exodus. The Templars found it under Mount Nebo and brought it back. When the Order was dissolved, they brought it to England and hid it in a crypt below Temple Church. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

Chillingsworth looked back at him. “So it is said in our traditions,” he confirmed. “The crypt was kept sealed for over two hundred years until King Henry VIII broke with Rome and secretly restored the Templars. A century later, the Royal Society, under the direction of Grand Architect, Sir Christopher Wren, commenced a study of the relics brought back from Jerusalem. He also oversaw the creation of this hall, both as a way to honor the Holy items of the Covenant and to facilitate further investigations. Sir Christopher, and later Sir Isaac Newton, recognized that there was a code hidden in the Sacred Measurements of the Tabernacle, a code that could be used to calculate the End of Days.”

Fiona was nodding along with him, right up until that last declaration. “End of Days?” she echoed.

“It was a matter of great concern back then,” Chillingsworth said. “I suppose it still is today, but men like Sir Isaac were fascinated with the problem of calculating when the world would end based on chronology and Bible prophecies. Sir Isaac himself predicted the prophecies regarding the End Times would be fulfilled no sooner than AD 2060, which I’m sure must have seemed very reassuring in 1704.” He sighed. “We all thought we’d have another fifty years or so, but I suppose even Sir Isaac is allowed a mistake now and then.”

Pierce stiffened. “You think the world is ending now?”

Chillingsworth stopped and turned to face Pierce. “Isn’t that why you’re here? The signs are appearing. An earthquake that shakes the whole world, the sun standing still in the sky. And now…you lot. We were told to look for you when the fulfillment began.”

“Okay, you keep saying that. Explain. Are you talking about another prophecy?”

“In a manner of speaking,” The man now appeared ill-at-ease. “I gather you have some knowledge of our organization. Our reputation for secrecy, rituals, and such.”

Pierce nodded. “I also know that a lot of what people say about you is rubbish. Most of your so-called secret rites are common knowledge.”

“Most,” Chillingsworth agreed. “But there are certain…shall we say…‘nuances?’ Aspects of our rites and traditions that are not public knowledge. Matters known and understood only by Master Masons like myself, who have achieved the highest degree of knowledge. One such tradition, which it is said goes back to the time of the Templar Knights, compels us to offer assistance to anyone who invokes the Great Seal. When we saw the other signs fulfilled, we began our vigil, which is why I happened to be here at the Lodge tonight. Of course, you surprised us by coming in through the back door, as it were. We stopped using the Temple Church entrance after it was mentioned in that book—”

“I’m sorry,” Pierce interrupted. “What’s this Great Seal you’re talking about?”

“It’s the Ark,” Fiona said. “Remember, the Ark of the Covenant is on their coat of arms?”

“That’s not precisely right,” Chillingsworth said, as he reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a fountain pen and a business card embossed with the same design Dourado had showed them earlier.

“Invoking the Great Seal refers to demonstrating knowledge of the position of the cherubim within the circle of God’s glory.” He drew a circle connecting the points of the rays, and then drew vertical lines through the bodies of the paired angels.

“That’s the Sign of Hercules,” Fiona said, unconsciously rubbing the tattoo of the same symbol on the back of her hand.

The older man faced her. “We maintain video surveillance in the Temple Church sanctuary, just in case. When we saw you describe that pattern of the Great Seal, we knew that the time to fulfill our obligation had arrived.” He lowered his head slightly and gave a knowing smile. “I’ll be honest with you, most of us thought it was just a myth. But, here you are.”

Pierce leaned close to Gallo, though Fiona had no difficulty hearing his whisper. “Alexander must have played a part in organizing the London Grand Lodge. He created, or at the very least, co-opted the Freemasons to keep the Ark of the Covenant safe and secret.”

Gallo appeared unconvinced. “Why didn’t he just move it to one of the Society locations? Like the Citadel?”

The Citadel was the original headquarters of the Herculean Society, located in a hidden cave beneath the Rock of Gibraltar.

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Pierce said. He turned to Chillingsworth. “As you said, here we are.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, as if Chillingsworth was waiting for Pierce to take the initiative. When that did not happen, he motioned for them to continue following him. As he approached the hanging, he resumed speaking. “The outer courtyard pillars and panels are still in storage. There wasn’t room to set everything up here. The brazen altar is in another hall. Sir Isaac indicated in his writings that the Tabernacle and all its utensils and relics would need to be restored to the Temple Mount when the time of God’s glory arrived.”

“Why there?” Fiona inquired.

Pierce was ready with the answer. “Jerusalem has long been associated with geomagnetic currents known as ‘Ley lines.’ There’s a reason Solomon chose to build the Temple where he did. It’s a power spot, just like Mount Sinai. I’m guessing the other relics are important, too. Maybe they’re part of the control mechanism, or a safety measure so we don’t get fried by the shekinah light.”

“Well that explains it,” Fiona exclaimed. “The Nazis didn’t have the Tabernacle. That’s why their faces melted.”

Pierce tapped a finger to the tip of his nose and pointed at Fiona. “Now you’re getting it.”

Gallo groaned. “Don’t encourage him, dear.”

Pierce turned back to Chillingsworth. “I’d like to see those writings, if you have them. I think Newton might have understood how we’re supposed to use the Ark to shut down the Black Knight.”

“Of course. All our resources are at your disposal.” Chillingsworth stopped at the curtain, and, with a theatrical flourish, drew it back to reveal the interior of the sacred tent.

The lights in the hall could not penetrate the thick fabric, but in the beam of Pierce’s light, Fiona could make out a rectangular space, twice as deep as it was wide. There was an ornate table to one side, a large six-armed menorah, and directly ahead, up against another heavy curtain, was a small altar. All the objects reflected the flashlight with a deep yellow glow like nothing Fiona had ever seen before. She knew, intuitively, that the metal had to be gold.

“This part of the Tabernacle was called ‘the Holy Place,’” Pierce said. “It’s where the priests would offer the sacrifices and burn incense every day. The Ark would be in the next chamber, the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, behind the Altar of Incense. Only the High Priest — the Kohen Gadol—could enter into the presence of the Ark. He had to wear a special garment called an ephod, woven with gold threads. Some modern scholars have speculated that the vestments acted like a Faraday suit, insulating the priest from the energy of the Ark.

“There was also a special breastplate called the hoshen, studded with gems and crystals, which might have acted as a sort of interface or control device, and the mitznefeta, a turban with a gold crown inscribed with the true name of God. But I think the Urim and Thummim are the most important components of the ensemble.”

“What are those?” Fiona asked.

“No one’s really sure. They’re only mentioned a few times in scripture and never described, but according to the Bible, they’re one of the three ways that God revealed his will to humans — the other two being dreams and prophets. The linguistic roots suggested literal translations of ‘Lights and Perfections,’ or ‘Revelation and Truth,’ or simply ‘Innocent and Guilty.’

“It’s believed that they were a sort of oracular device, a Divine form of casting lots to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person. Two stones: one white, one black. Put them both in a bag, ask God a question. ‘Is so-and-so a secret sinner?’ Take out a white stone and they’re innocent. A black stone, and—”

“They get stoned,” Fiona finished.

“But even that is just supposition. Members of the Latter Day Saints church believed that the Urim and Thummim were sacred crystals, which their founder, Joseph Smith, bound together like eyeglasses, enabling him to read and interpret the Golden Plates that contained the Book of Mormon.”

“An instant translator,” Fiona remarked. “Just like Cintia’s babelfish.”

“Only better, because these could read the secret language of God.”

Fiona’s eyes widened a little at that possibility.

“I’m eager to see them. All that was known about them was that they were to be placed in the small pockets sewn into the hoshen.” Pierce turned to Chillingsworth. “Do you have the High Priest’s garments? We might not need them if my suspicions about Fiona being a Baal’Shem are correct, but why take chances.”

A frown creased Chillingsworth’s forehead. “No priestly vestments were found when the crypt was opened.” His expression indicated that there was more he wished to share, but instead of putting it into words, he stepped through the opening and walked the full length of the Holy Place.

Pierce opened his mouth, perhaps to warn the man of the dangers of approaching the Ark unprotected, but before he could utter a single word, their host pulled back the curtain that separated Holy from Most Holy, revealing the cube-shaped enclosure.

And nothing else.

“Where’s the Ark?” Pierce said. Fiona could hear the fear in his voice.

“I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding, Dr. Pierce. The Ark of the Covenant is not, nor has it ever been, in our care. If the Knights of the Temple found it, they did not bring it here.”

FIFTY-ONE

Lazarus and Carter left Axum in the back of an old five-ton truck, accompanied by Abuna Mateos and half-a-dozen men armed with AK-47s and machetes, but they were not prisoners or hostages on their way to an execution.

“They are here to protect us,” Mateos told them as they climbed aboard. “The roads are not safe after dark. And we cannot afford to wait for sunrise.”

Lazarus did not need to ask how the clergyman knew this. The bishop had explained everything early in the night, outside the Chapel of the Tablets.

“The Lord came to me in a vision,” he had said. “He told me that you would come for the Ark, and that I was to help you return it to Mount Zion.”

“That’s not the real Ark,” Lazarus had countered. “But you already knew that.”

“The vessel you saw is a holy, consecrated tabot. So, as far as the Church is concerned, it is an Ark of the Covenant. But you are correct. It is not the Ark the Israelites bore through the wilderness, and which Solomon safeguarded in his Temple.”

“Well, that’s the Ark I need, so if you’ll just step aside, I’ll be on my way.”

“I will take you to it,” Mateos had said in a solemn voice.

The true Ark, he had revealed, had indeed been kept in the Chapel of the Tablets until 1991, when political unrest, civil war, and ultimately revolution, threatened the long-standing arrangement between Church and State. Fearing that a new government might attempt to seize the Ark, removing the symbol by which the centuries-old Imperial dynasty had ruled by divine right, the keepers of the Ark had fashioned and consecrated a replica. They had then removed the real Ark to one of its earlier resting places, the monastery of Mitsele Fasiladas on the isle of Tana Qirqos, just off the eastern shore of Lake Tana, about 250 miles to the southwest of Axum.

Lazarus took the bishop at his word. The man had no reason to deceive him with an offer of assistance. Lazarus had been caught red-handed, after all. The clergyman’s sincerity however did not automatically mean that his Church was in possession of the true Ark.

Carter shared his apprehension, but they both knew that the only way to resolve the mystery was with a visit to the remote island monastery.

They rode through the night, reaching the lakeside city of Bahir Dar just after sunrise. Mateos sent their armed escort back to Axum, and then hired a boat to take them twenty miles north to Tana Qirqos.

Lake Tana was most famous for being the source of the Blue Nile, which joined with the White Nile in Khartoum to become the world’s longest river. But for Ethiopians it held great spiritual and historical significance. Many of the islands dotting the shallow but expansive lake were home to monasteries, and each monastery was linked to an ancient tradition or miracle. Tana Qirqos, their destination, not only figured into the story of the Ark of the Covenant, but also the history of Christianity.

“Saint Frumentius, who brought Christianity to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, is buried on Tana Qirqos,” Mateos told them, as the boat chugged along. “And there is an altar containing a stone upon which the Virgin Mary rested during her journey back from Egypt.”

“Is that really true?” Carter asked.

“There are many such stories in all faiths,” Abuna Mateos admitted. “Whether they are true does not diminish their symbolic value. The Lord taught in parables when he walked on the Earth. These places serve to remind us that the foundation of our faith reaches back many thousands of years.”

Carter’s lips curled into a mischievous smile. “In 1974, about two hundred miles west of here, anthropologists discovered the most complete skeleton ever of a female Australopithecus afarensis, who lived 3.2 million years ago. That’s my foundation.”

“Felice,” Lazarus murmured. “Play nice.”

Mateos laughed. “We are as proud of Dinkinesh — I believe you call her ‘Lucy’—as we are of our spiritual traditions. One need not preclude the other.”

“I can appreciate symbolic value,” Carter countered. “But I’m a scientist. Facts are the only thing that matter to me.”

“And yet you seek the Ark of the Covenant, a powerful religious symbol. And you look for it here, where all we have are our stories, which you do not believe. Curious.”

“What we seek,” she clarified, “is a powerful device once used by Moses and Joshua to trigger earthquakes and stop the sun in the sky. And we came here because millions of Ethiopians are convinced that you’ve got that device. The man we work for made a pretty convincing case for why it can’t be in Ethiopia. So whether I believe or not is irrelevant. Do you have the Ark? Are those stories true?”

Mateos sagged into one of the chairs bolted to the deck. “The story you know and that all my countrymen believe, the story recorded in the Kebra Nagast, the Glory of Kings, which we have told for hundreds of years, is almost certainly false. It is a story created by men to justify their right to rule over other men. I know this. All learned men know this. The Kingdom of Sheba was not in Ethiopia, and neither Solomon nor the Priests of the Holy Temple would have permitted anyone to remove the Ark. However, I also know that the one true Ark is here, and has been for more than two thousand years.

“This is what I believe happened: In the days of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, God sent the prophet Jeremiah to deliver a message of judgment. The king, angered by the prophecy, ordered Jeremiah to be cast into a cistern, where he would surely have died. But the king’s servant — his abdemelech—was a godly man. He rescued Jeremiah from the cistern. To repay his faith, God promised the abdemelech that he would be spared when the judgement came. Scripture says little else about that godly servant, except that he was an Ethiopian.”

“Pierce thinks Jeremiah hid the Ark,” Lazarus said. “But he could have had help from that Ethiopian.”

“I believe that is how the Ark came to be in my country, but it is only an idea I have. Perhaps there is another explanation, I do not know. I know only that the true Ark is there, at Tana Qirqos. You will see.”

Despite the man’s evident conviction, Lazarus remained skeptical. From what he could tell, the entire story of the Ark in Ethiopia was like one great big shell game. First the Ark was in the Chapel of the Tablets, but no one was allowed to see it. Then that Ark turned out to be bogus, but the real one was somewhere else. He couldn’t help but wonder if the Ark at Tana Qirqos would prove to be just one more deception.

In the early light, the island looked like a fortress rising from the surface of the lake. A solid mass of basalt, it looked at least four hundred yards long and a hundred feet high, surrounded by reedy shallows. The wall itself was sheer, impossible to climb, but the boat’s skipper seemed to know where to take them. They circled around the island and put ashore near the base of the wall. Mateos led them along a barely visible trail that reached a section of the island that could not be accessed by boat. There, they found a small compound of stone structures that looked like ancient ruins. In one small round building — little more than a hut — they met a group of wizened monks who smelled of roasted meat and incense. The monks regarded Carter with undisguised disdain — Mateos had explained that women were not permitted to enter the monastery — but they said nothing, deferring to the senior clergyman, who explained their purpose. The exchange happened so quickly, Lazarus did not even have time to contact Dourado and have her activate the babelfish system.

It occurred to him then that they had not checked in with Cerberus HQ since the previous afternoon, shortly after arriving in Axum. Dourado had not called, which probably meant that Pierce wasn’t having any better luck than they were.

One of the monks led them up a steep trail that rose to the top of the fortress-like rock, overgrown with scrubby brush and cactuses. The surface of the lake was more than a mile above sea level, but the two Ethiopians, despite their advanced age, moved up the path like a pair of mountain goats. Once atop the rock formation, the trail brought them to another structure, more modern than the monastery, but just as run down. The structure covered a natural rock formation, carved into an altar that looked like a tower of stone cubes.

Their guide muttered something in his native language, which Mateos translated. “This is the altar where sacrifices were made when the Ark was kept here many thousands of years ago.”

The monk stared at Lazarus for a moment and then beckoned him forward. Using gestures and pantomime, the monk explained that they needed to move the altar out of the way. Lazarus was a bit surprised at the request, since it appeared to be a solid mass, connected to the underlying rock, but as he braced his shoulder against it and started pushing, he saw a well-concealed seam.

The stone was heavy but not impossibly so, and after a couple of minutes of rocking and shoving, a small square opening was revealed. The monk pointed to the hole and said something that needed no translation.

In there.

Lazarus glanced at Carter, reading the doubt in her expression. Mateos must have sensed their shared skepticism. “The Ark was brought into this crypt through another entrance, which has been sealed to prevent it from being stolen.”

The explanation was plausible enough, but then so were all the other excuses Mateos and his Church had employed over the years to prevent anyone from verifying their claims about the Ark. Mateos seemed sincere enough, but if he intended treachery, there was no better place to disappear them than a hidden crypt on a remote island that no one even knew they were visiting.

Lazarus stuck his head through the opening and surveyed it in the beam of his flashlight. The floor was about five feet down and sloped away to form a descending passage that led away into the darkness. Satisfied that it was at least passable, he reversed position and lowered himself feet first into the passage. It was a tight fit, and his shoulders scraped against the stone walls as he pushed deeper into the hewn-out shaft. Carter came next, slipping through with considerably more ease.

The passage sloped, and after about thirty feet, it opened into a larger chamber. Before he reached it, Lazarus sensed a change in the air. Fingers of static electricity brushed his skin like the touch of butterfly wings. A whiff of ozone stung his nostrils, and the air hummed with a sound like an electrical transformer. As he emerged from the passage, his light fell upon on an object shrouded in heavy blankets, with long poles protruding out from beneath the coverings. It was bigger than he expected. The shape under the blankets was longer and taller than the replica he had seen in the Chapel of the Tablets in Axum, almost six feet long, and more than four feet high. Although the relic itself was not visible, the poles returned a metallic reflection — hammered gold.

The hum grew louder as he approached the shrouded object. It was the source of the disturbance.

The old monk’s voice rang out in the chamber, and Mateos translated. “Go no closer.”

Lazarus looked back and saw the others — Carter, the bishop, and the monk — standing by the wall near the mouth of the passage. Carter’s eyes were wide with disbelief.

“It must remain covered,” Mateos continued. “Except in the presence of the ordained High Priest, wearing the Crown of God and carrying the Urim and the Thummim in the Breastpiece of Judgement. No one else may see it, lest the glory of God consume them.”

“Glory of God,” Carter echoed. “Pierce called it shekinah.”

“Yes. When it is uncovered, the Ark creates shekinah. Only the High Priest can command it.”

It could have been another convenient excuse, another part of the endless shell game designed to con believers into taking it on faith.

It could have been.

But it wasn’t.

Lazarus didn’t need to see it to know that they had found the true Ark of the Covenant.

FIFTY-TWO

The Jeep slowed to a complete stop in the southwest-bound lane. There was little danger of a collision with another vehicle. There were no other cars on the highway. Technically, there wasn’t even a highway anymore. The earthquake had obliterated several stretches of the remote Tok Cut-off section of the Glenn Highway, leaving it impassable to anything not built for off-road travel. Fortunately, there were plenty of vehicles like that in the 49th State, and more than a few intrepid and opportunistic souls willing to embrace the challenge for the right price.

Ishiro Tanaka handed over a roll of bills, the balance of the amount he and the Jeep’s owner had agreed upon before leaving Fairbanks almost six hours earlier, and climbed out. Anchorage would have been closer, but at last report, there wasn’t much left of Alaska’s largest city.

“You sure about this, buddy?” the driver asked. “It’s going to be a while before anyone else comes out this way. You’ll be on your own.”

“I’m sure,” Tanaka said. “I used to work here. I know what to expect.”

The driver shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”

The thought brought a smile to Tanaka’s lips.

The Jeep pulled away and executed a tight 180-degree turn, lining up to head back the way they’d come, but before departing, the driver stopped again. “Hey, buddy! Here.”

He pitched something in Tanaka’s direction, a tall cylinder that looked a little like a small, home-sized fire extinguisher. “For what you paid me, it’s the least I can do.”

Tanaka recognized what it was even before he caught it out of the air. A canister of Counter Assault bear repellent spray, similar to self-defense pepper spray, but designed for driving off grizzly bears and other deadly wild animals — a must-have when venturing into the Alaskan wilderness. Tanaka wasn’t planning to do any cross-country hiking, but he touched the top of the can to his forehead in a friendly salute. “Thanks.”

“You watch yourself out here,” the man added, and then drove off.

Tanaka stuffed the canister into the pocket of his coat but waited until the Jeep rounded a corner before starting up the adjacent road. A large blue sign with white block letters was mounted on posts at the roadside.

At the top of the sign, in smaller letters, was the name that formed the acronym most commonly associated with the facility.

Directly ahead at the top of a low rise, about two hundred yards from the highway, was an enormous, windowless white building. Between him and it was an eight-foot high chain link fence, tipped with another foot of barbed wire.

One last obstacle to overcome, he thought.

He approached the gate — locked, as expected — and gripped the links. He had never been much of an athlete, never had reason to even attempt climbing a fence, but how hard could it be?

His toes refused to find purchase in the tight diamond-shaped holes between the links, and his arms were too weak to lift his body without help. He tried again, to no better effect, and then hammered his fists against the gate in impotent rage.

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost, he thought. I should have brought bolt cutters.

He gripped the links again, but looked away, toward the trees that surrounded the fenced property. Failure was not an option. He had to get inside.

“Help you with something?”

The disembodied male voice startled Tanaka. He took a deep breath to compose himself, then located the speaker box mounted to the side of the gate.

That’s new, Tanaka thought, but then he recalled that the last time he had been here, the gate had been manned by soldiers armed with M16 rifles.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought everyone was gone.”

“Well, you thought wrong. This is a restricted facility. I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”

Tanaka had assumed that the University would evacuate their personnel from the site, but someone had stayed behind as a caretaker. He took another calming breath, then continued in his best professional manner. “I’m afraid we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. My name is Dr. Ishiro Tanaka. I worked here a few years ago. I’ve been contracted by the government to assess the extent of the damage.”

“The University owns the facility now.” The man said it like a challenge.

“I’m aware of that, but I’m sure you’re aware of the government’s ongoing stake in this operation.” He paused a beat. “Listen, why don’t you give the head office in Fairbanks a call. They’ll verify everything.”

Phone lines and high-speed networks were down statewide, and satellite phones were unreliable so close to the Arctic circle. Even if the man managed to get through to somebody in authority, there would be no way to confirm or refute Tanaka’s claim. He doubted the man would even make the attempt.

There was silence for several seconds, then the voice spoke again. “I’ll be down in a second.”

Tanaka allowed himself a relieved sigh, as he leaned back against a fence post. A few minutes later, the crunch of tires on pavement and the faint whine of an electric motor heralded the approach of a golf-cart, similar to the robot shuttles Marcus Fallon had used at Tomorrowland, except this one was not autonomous. A twenty-something man with long hair, wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt sat behind the steering wheel. He drove the cart down the hill and stopped just a few steps from the gate.

The man regarded him warily for a moment but then dismounted and approached the gate, key ring in hand. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Tanaka. If I had known you were coming…”

Tanaka waved off the apology. “If it’s all the same, I’d like to get started right away. Was there much damage here?”

“A few broken dishes in the cupboards, but nothing serious.” The man unlocked the gate and swung it open to admit him. “With the generators, we probably could have stayed online, but the project manager made the call to get everyone back to civilization.”

Tanaka stepped through. “Everyone but you, I take it?”

“That’s right.”

“Good,” Tanaka said, and then added. “I’m sorry.”

The confused look on the man’s face disappeared as Tanaka brought the canister of bear spray up and squeezed the handle.

Contrary to popular belief, bear spray was not more potent than similar products designed for self-defense against human attackers. In fact, the concentration of capsicum — the hot pepper oil used as a blistering agent — in pepper spray could be as high as 30 %. By contrast, government regulations required bear spray to contain no more than 2 %. The purpose of bear spray was not to harm a bear or other animal, but to discourage it from a distance, which it did with a greater volume of spray under higher pressure, more than doubling the effective range.

At point-blank range, though, a blast of bear spray in the face guaranteed that a generous amount of the mild acid went into the victim’s eyes.

The man jerked away, hunching over, covering his face and swearing. A moment later, the curses became a shriek of pain as the capsicum began reacting with his mucous membranes. But those were silenced when Tanaka brought the mostly full canister down on the back of the man’s head. The blow dropped the man to his knees, dazing him.

As blunt weapons went, the bear spray canister was a poor choice, but as with its contents, any deficiency in potency could be offset with volume.

Tanaka brought the metal container down again. The stunned caretaker threw up a hand, blindly trying to deflect the assault, but another blow flattened him. Tanaka did not relent however. He dropped to his knees and hit the man again.

And again.

And again.

The canister had become slick with gore and threatened to twist out of his grip every time he slammed it down. He squeezed it so tightly that the pressurized container dimpled under his fingertips, but he kept slamming it down, until the man’s head was an unrecognizable mass of ravaged tissue and bone. Then, he fell back on his haunches, turned his head, and vomited.

He had just killed a man.

He knew, on an intuitive level, how absurd it was to feel remorse over a single death. His actions in Geneva had killed thousands…hundreds of thousands…perhaps even millions. And soon, he would bring about the death of every living thing on Earth. Bludgeoning the caretaker had been different only in that it was more immediate.

More…visceral.

But the end result was the same. A few moments of pain, and then an end to suffering forever.

He checked his watch and was surprised to see that it was almost nine p.m. At this latitude, and so near the summer solstice, the nights were short and started very late. That had been one of the hardest things for him to adjust to during the eighteen months he had spent here, back in the early days of the project. The cold and the long nights of winter hadn’t bothered him much at all, but eighteen-plus hours of daylight was enough to drive the soberest soul crazy.

That thought brought another smile. In a few hours, the length of time it would take him to retrofit the Ionic Research Instrument — the IRI — to accommodate the Roswell fragment, the distinction between night and day would become meaningless.

He would divert all the sun’s light away from the Earth. There would be only night, and in a matter of weeks, a frozen wasteland with no one left to care.

There would be suffering, yes, but in the grand scheme of the cosmos, it would be brief.

He coughed, spat to clear the taste of bile from his mouth, got to his feet, and dragged the corpse off the road and into the trees, where it would not be seen in the unlikely event that someone happened by. Then, he got in the cart and started up the hill.

No more obstacles.

No distance left to travel.

It would all be over soon.