Pandora's Ark

EPILOGUE

While Kimball stayed behind with the pontiff, Leviticus and Isaiah acted on behalf of the Vatican working as emissaries, making sure that the Ark of the Covenant was properly situated according to the Imam’s agreement.

After the debacle inside the Basilica, the Ark was immediately transported back to the Micron Laboratory where the false bottom was located and the composite removed. The Ark then went through more rigorous examinations, the results negative. But in order to be accepted by the Museum of the arts d'Extrême-Orient, certain precautions had to be taken.

The Ark was hermetically sealed in a thick Plexiglas container, which meant that oxygen was pumped out and argon gas pumped in. Once the lab gave the clearance that the Ark no longer posed a threat and was thoroughly sealed, only then was it accepted.

The trip was by plane. And the Ark had been placed in a grand-size showroom as the focal point of all the ancient pieces exhibited.

In its casing it showed magnificently, its gold aura expanding in its purest form. And despite what happened in the Basilica, people from all over the world visited the museum and swore that they could feel enlightenment within its presence, an uplifting, a sense of goodness that overshadowed anything else.

Others felt nothing at all, saying that those who experienced anything at all did so only because they wanted to believe that the Ark was something mythical, and provided solace when solace was nothing more than a state of mind to begin with.

But Leviticus and Isaiah knew better as they stood there in suit and tie, feeling something over and above solace. It was absolute peace.

Once the Ark was in place, after they had been shown the state-of-the-art security system that was unsurpassable, they left Switzerland and returned to the Vatican, knowing that Kimball would be standing on the tarmac ready to brief them on their next mission.