The Key

115

Arkadian was back at his desk on the fourth floor of the police building. He knew that everything he had been working on would soon be public knowledge, so he saw little point in continued caution. He finished his report and read it through.

Gabriel’s email had provided all the missing links. He could now connect the Church with Dragonfields, the map with the ancient location of Eden and the timing of the huge loan to the Church that had underwritten the whole covert venture. They had been seeking buried treasure after all, but not the legendary hoards of Alexander the Great and King Croesus. They had been looking for more modern riches. All underground oil reserves start out as prehistoric trees and shrubs that decay over millions of years to become carbon-rich crude. Because of its size, its age, and the secrecy that had always surrounded its location, the Garden of Eden had become, over time, the largest, most enriched untapped oil reserve on earth. The Church had not been trying to locate Eden for any sacred reason but so that it could mine its past — everybody’s past — in order to safeguard its own future.

Arkadian attached the report to a mailing list he had prepared including the addresses of as many news outlets as he could find — large and small, local and international — as well as several independent political blogging sites. The list also included Interpol, the press offices of a number of governments — and the Vatican. He had left the addressees visible so that each one would know who else it had been sent to and those who were already compromised would realize a cover-up was impossible. It was his way of casting the seeds as widely as possible so they could take root wherever they found purchase. He liked the biblical implications of this.

Finally he emailed his report to the entire Ruin City Police Department, copied it on to a flash drive that he slipped into his pocket, then grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and went home to his wife.

VII And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. Revelation 12:16