Stones of Fire

27

‘Figuratively speaking,’ Edie amended.

‘I most certainly hope so.’ Concerned his companion may have watched too many police dramas on TV, Cædmon tightened his grip on her arm. Like a harried parent with an unruly child.

Surreptitiously, he glanced around. Rock-strewn, treed and hilly, the surrounding terrain could easily conceal a hunter on the prowl. Attired in her red and purple plaid skirt, Edie made an easy target. While warning bells were not yet clanging, they did tinkle, the place having about it a sinister air.

As they approached the bareheaded man seated on the bench, Cædmon closed the black brolly he’d been holding aloft, the wintry rain having dwindled to a faint drizzle. He hooked the curved handle over his bent arm.

‘A most interesting place to meet, betwixt and between these two beautiful creatures of prey,’ Eliot Hopkins remarked, slowly rising to his feet. He gestured first to a lone wolf warily prowling the fenced hillside beside them. Then he pointed a gloved hand to the bald eagle perched on the opposite hillock. ‘Did you know that the eagle has been a symbol of war since Babylonian times?’

With his thatch of wavy white hair, patrician features and ruddy red cheeks, Cædmon thought Eliot Hopkins a grandfatherly-looking man. Dressed in English tweed, he could have passed for a country squire, a harmless dolt who, if prompted, could natter for hours on end about shifting weather patterns and the breeding of Leicester Longwool sheep.

‘How about canning the bullshit,’ Edie retorted, ignoring Cædmon’s admonition. ‘Because of you, and your boundless greed, Jonathan Padgham is dead! And don’t give me any bunk about him going to London to take care of funeral arrangements. I know what happened yesterday at the museum.’

‘Jonathan’s death is most unfortunate and, I am sad to say, entirely my fault,’ the museum director readily confessed, a morose look in his rheumy grey eyes. ‘I had no idea that Jonathan was in danger. Although once the deed was done, I had no choice but to assist in the cover-up.’

‘I’m curious to know how you became involved with such a bloodthirsty gang,’ Cædmon remarked. ‘You don’t strike me as moving in the same circles.’

Smiling ever so slightly, Hopkins nodded. ‘Shortly after I acquired the Stones of Fire I was approached by a private consortium interested in buying the breastplate at an exorbitant price. When I refused to sell the relic, the consortium resorted to blackmail, demanding that I relinquish custody of the breastplate or they would alert the IARC.’

‘Who or what is the IARC?’ Edie asked.

‘That would be the Illicit Antiquities Research Center. They monitor the international trade in stolen or secretly excavated antiquities.’

‘And that would have created quite the public scandal,’ she correctly deduced. ‘So, why didn’t you give the consortium the Stones of Fire? Why take the risk of being exposed?’

‘I called their bluff, knowing full well that if the IARC became involved, the consortium would lose all chance of getting their hands on my precious relic. A tragic miscalculation as it turned out.’

‘Proving that one cannot trump the devil,’ Cædmon muttered, infuriated that this deadly game had cost his old friend his life.

‘I can assure you that if I had known several weeks ago what I know now, I would have —’

‘Oh, puh-lease!’ Edie interjected. ‘You sound like someone running for public office.’ She folded her arms over her chest, a stern headmistress in black leather. ‘I just don’t get it. Why would this so-called consortium resort to cold-blooded murder to get the Stones of Fire? It’s just a bit of gold with twelve gemstones.’

A drawn-out pause ensued, the museum director evidently debating whether or not to answer. ‘In and of itself, you’re probably correct,’ he finally replied. ‘But when used in concert with another holy relic, the Stones of Fire becomes a conduit to God. Thus making it a prerequisite for the larger prize.’

… another holy relic… a prerequisite for the larger prize.

Cædmon’s mouth slackened, the realization hitting him like a bunch of fives to the belly.

‘I don’t believe it… They’re actually going after the Ark.’

‘The Ark?’ Edie’s gaze ricocheted between him and Eliot Hopkins. ‘As in the Ark of the Covenant?’

‘None other,’ Hopkins confirmed.

Still in a state of shock, Cædmon pressed harder. ‘How do you know that the consortium is searching for the Ark?’

‘I know because I was searching for it. Two days before the theft at the museum, my Georgetown home was burglarized. Imagine my surprise when the only thing stolen was my research notes. For some thirty years I’ve hunted down clues, sent excavation teams into remote areas of the Middle East, continuing the work my grandfather began but could not finish.’

‘Good God! Do you mean to say that you’re Oliver Hopkins’ grandson?’ Considered by scholars to be daft as a brush, during the early part of the twentieth century Oliver Hopkins had spent a fortune searching for the Ark of the Covenant. To no avail, the wealthy adventurer barely escaping the Holy Land with his head intact.

‘I came considerably closer to finding that elusive jewel in the biblical crown than my grandfather did. And in so doing, I knew that if I was to avoid the curse of Bethshemesh, I had to first find the Stones of Fire.’

Edie snickered derisively. ‘The curse of Bethshemesh? Who are you, a character in an Indiana Jones movie?’

‘Hardly,’ Cædmon replied, the conversation about to darken several shades. ‘The punishment for accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant is a very painful death, Yahweh having a beastly temper. That said, in the Book of Samuel the cautionary tale of the city of Bethshemesh is recounted, Yahweh indiscriminately slaughtering fifty thousand of the residents as punishment for the handful of men who, overtaken with curiosity, had dared to peer inside the Ark.’

‘Jesus,’ she softly swore. ‘God did that?’

‘Elsewhere the Bible speaks of the Ark levelling whole mountains, parting rivers, annihilating enemy armies and destroying fortified cities. Those who doubted the Ark’s power often found themselves covered in cancerous tumours or painful burns,’ he informed her, knowing that most people preferred their God sanitized, the ugliness of the Old Testament swept under a heavenly carpet.

‘It sounds more like a weapon than a religious artefact.’

‘The Ark of the Covenant was, to use modern parlance, a weapon of mass destruction, enabling the ragtag Israelites to conquer the Holy Land. Shielded with the Stones of Fire, the high priest could channel and control all of that explosive energy.’

‘Thus making the Stones of Fire a “prerequisite” to finding the Ark of the Covenant.’

Having stood silent, Eliot Hopkins rejoined the conversation. ‘Now you see why I’m convinced that my mysterious consortium is intent on hunting bigger game? Think of the power contained within that precious gold chest. The Ark radiated divine power and might. And if one had a mind to communicate with the celestial spheres, the Ark could summon forth angels and even manifest the Almighty himself.’

The enraptured expression on Eliot Hopkins’ visage belonged to that of a man obsessed. Cædmon knew the look well, having once been an obsessed man himself, his fascination with the Knights Templar having bordered on the fanatical — the reason, long years ago, he was expelled from Oxford.

‘A lot of people would say that the supposed power of the Ark was nothing but a fanciful myth used to entertain Hebrews gathered around the evening campfire,’ Edie argued.

‘And there are those who claim that God is dead. I, however, am not one of them.’

‘So, what happened to the Ark? Was it stolen? Was it lost? Was it destroyed?’ his companion asked in rapid-fire succession.

Eliot Hopkins lifted his wool-clad shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘The pages of the Old Testament don’t give so much as a hint. We know only that Moses constructed the Ark in the fifteenth century BC; five centuries later King Solomon built a lavish temple to house the Ark; and sometime prior to the construction of the Second Temple in 516 BC the Ark vanished, seemingly into the dust of history.’

‘Surely there’s a theory or two to explain its disappearance,’ Edie persisted.

‘Most biblical historians concur that there are five probable scenarios to explain the Ark’s disappearance,’ Cædmon replied, beating the older man to the starting gate. ‘The first of these concerns Menelik, King Solomon’s son with the Queen of Sheba. Those who adhere to this theory have postulated that Menelik stole the Ark from the Temple around 950 BC and took it to Ethiopia, where it resides to this day.’

‘Let’s not forget the theory put forth in Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ Edie said, smirking. ‘You know, that the Ark is in Egypt.’

‘A valid theory, as it turns out, the adherents of which believe that a few years after Solomon’s death the Ark was stolen in a raid by the Pharaoh Shishak and taken to his newly constructed capital of Tanis. Then there are the three remaining theories — which involve the Ark being plundered by the Babylonians, the Greeks or the Romans; take your pick.’

‘And I did, painstakingly considering each of those theories in turn,’ Eliot Hopkins informed them. ‘As you may or may not know, there are nearly two hundred references to the Ark contained within the pages of the Old Testament. Most of those references concern the period between the Exodus from Egypt and the construction of the Temple. This led me to surmise that the Ark of the Covenant disappeared shortly after Solomon constructed his fabulous building.’

Proving herself a sure-footed student, Edie said, ‘Then the Ark was either stolen by Menelik or Shishak.’

‘I know for a fact that the Ark does not reside in Ethiopia,’ the older man quietly asserted.

Hearing that, Cædmon deduced that Eliot Hopkins had very deep pockets, the political situation in Ethiopia dicey to say the least. Obtaining permission to mount a thorough search would have been expensive.

‘So, that means Shishak stole the Ark, and it’s buried in the pharaoh’s tomb.’

‘Not necessarily,’ the older man said in reply to Edie’s deduction. ‘Some years back, during a trip I made to the Middle East, a group of Bedouin traders told me the most fascinating tale of an English crusader who, en route between Palestine and Egypt, discovered a gold chest buried in the Plain of Esdraelon amidst the ruins of what had once been an Egyptian temple.’

‘I’ve heard this story,’ Cædmon murmured, knocked sideways by memories of his Oxford days.

‘Careful, Mr Aisquith. In this game a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’ Eliot Hopkins smiled, a kindly man offering a sage word of advice. ‘If you are familiar with the tale, then you undoubtedly have guessed at the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.’

Refusing to take the bait, Cædmon went on the offensive. ‘Why are you being so forthcoming with us? For years you’ve gone to great lengths to keep your pursuit of the Ark a secret.’

Grimacing, the museum director slid his gloved hand inside his overcoat. ‘Because it is inconsequential whether you know or don’t know.’

‘And why is that?’

Eliot Hopkins removed his hand from his coat, a Walther PPK clenched in his fist. ‘Because I have been ordered to kill you.’