Stones of Fire

47

Having verified that the gaping hole in the church wall was indeed empty, Stan sat down wearily on the nearest pew. The powerful Maglite cast an otherworldly glow over the small parish church. Looking down from the windows, stained-glass saints silently castigated him. His two men, one holding a sledgehammer, the other a pickaxe, stood at the ready, waiting for orders.

For the first time in twenty-five years Stan was worried that he might not be able to fulfil his obligations to God. With the Ark in his possession, he could change the destiny of the world according to God’s holy plan. But first he had to find it.

I have to find the Ark.

Those six words reverberated in his head like an emergency message playing on a continuous loop.

He pushed himself off the pew. A soldier of God would not, could not, surrender.

As he stepped towards his men, he kicked aside several pieces of broken marble, the centuries-old bas-relief detailing the life of St Lawrence destroyed. The thick Saxon wall had not given up without a fight, nearly an hour of labour required to expose the glaringly empty cavity.

Stan straightened his shoulders, ready to fight the next battle. His rest would come when the mission was completed.

‘Looks like we’ve hit another dead end, huh?’

Stan turned his attention to the Harvard scholar. Stoop-shouldered and shivering, he stood next to the pile of shattered stone.

‘Yes, my thoughts exactly.’

Suddenly realizing that all was not right in the world, the scholar’s gaze furtively moved from man to man. If it had not occurred to him before, it did now. He was outnumbered three to one.

‘Hey, fellas! Why so grim? The clues are there, embedded in the quatrains. We just need to go back to the drawing board.’ When he received no reply, the scholar held his arms out, motioning to each of them in turn. ‘All for one and one for all, right?’ When that received no reply, he tried a different tack. ‘I say we talk this over. All those in favour of peace talks, raise your hand.’

Stan wordlessly stared at the scholar. The snivelling pansy wanted to shake hands, forget their differences and begin again.

‘There is nothing more to be said.’

Intuiting that his death sentence had just been issued, the scholar turned on his heel. Like a church mouse scurrying in the shadows, he ran towards the porch doors at the end of the nave.

‘You lil fuckwad!’ Dropping the pickaxe, Boyd Braxton reached for the.357 Desert Eagle secured in the holster under his arm.

Stan slapped a hand on the gunny’s raised forearm. ‘Not in the house of God,’ he ordered sternly.

‘Yes, sir!’

Their weapons drawn, his men raced from the church in pursuit of the scholar who had betrayed them.

In no particular hurry, knowing the prey would soon be cornered, Stan headed for the double doors at the back of the church. Tomorrow morning the denizens of the small hamlet of Godmersham would wonder at the jumbled pile of stone. Teenage vandals would be blamed. No doubt an endless series of jumble sales would be held to pay for the damage.

Stuffing his Maglite under his arm, he reached into his trouser pocket and removed a gold money clip. He quickly unpeeled three hundred-dollar Franklins and shoved them into the wooden slit of the collection box.

Amends made, he stepped outside, pleased to note that the rain had finally faded to a manageable drizzle. In the adjacent cemetery he saw a bobbing pinpoint of red light, the laser beam from the gunny’s pistol. He headed in that direction.

Trapped en route to the Range Rover, the scholar now stood before Galen of Godmersham’s open grave, his arms raised in surrender.

‘“God swiftly traps the wicked,”’ Stan murmured.

Boyd Braxton placed the muzzle of his Desert Eagle against the other man’s temple. ‘I think we’re gonna have to rename him Mister Twinkletoes.’

‘Do you guys have any idea of the sentence for murder?’ the scholar wheezed, his arms wavering in mid-air. Like bed sheets flapping in the breeze.

‘I answer only to God’s law,’ Stan replied. Then, giving the scholar an opportunity to atone for his depraved existence, ‘“Except ye repent, ye shall die in your sins.”’

‘Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong! You’re the guys sneaking around, breaking into churches, carrying guns. I’m just a debt-ridden grad student trying to make an honest —’

‘Man up! For you are soon to meet your maker.’

‘Christ! Don’t do this! I’m begging you to —’ The soliloquy was cut short by a mewling whimper.

‘Whew! Somebody needs a diaper,’ Boyd Braxton muttered, the scholar having lost control of his bowels.

Disgusted, Stan nodded at the former gunnery sergeant. ‘Kill him. He is an abomination unto the Lord.’

A single shot reverberated in the night.

Like the tolling of a church bell.

‘Now that’s convenient,’ the gunny remarked, gesturing with his gun barrel to the near-headless body crumpled in the bottom of the grave. Stuffing the powerful pistol into his holster, he bent at the waist and retrieved a shovel. ‘All in a day’s work, huh, sir?’

‘God derives no pleasure from the death of the wicked. Neither should you.’

His faith renewed, Stan knew that Eid al-Adha was four days and counting. Time enough to find the Ark. Like the good marine that he was, he had a contingency plan.

‘Has Sanchez checked in yet?’ Sanchez was the man tasked with surveillance in Oxford.

‘About three hours ago, sir. Aisquith and the woman are holed up in a hotel. Sanchez snagged the room next to theirs. Since there’s an adjoining door between the two rooms, he’s keeping an eye on the pair with a peephole video camera.’

‘Relieve Sanchez,’ he said to Braxton. ‘I want hourly status reports. If the Brit so much as sneezes into a snot rag, I want to know about it.’