The Revelation Code

18

Cross was waiting when Simeon brought Nina back to the Mission: not in the control room, but in the church, glaring down at her from the pulpit. The light shining through the stained-glass windows cast a malevolent red tint over his face. ‘Did you really think you could escape, Dr Wilde?’ he asked. ‘There are cameras all around the island, not just at the Mission — we saw you as soon as you came out into the open.’

‘Yeah, I should have guessed,’ was Nina’s sullen reply. ‘A control freak like you wouldn’t stop at watching people in the bathroom.’

‘So what do we do with her?’ demanded Simeon.

‘She should be punished,’ added Anna. Norvin, the skin around his eyes a blotchy red, nodded in agreement.

Dalton, sitting in the front row of pews, spoke up. ‘As much as I’d like to see her suffer, we need her. Even if we get the angel from her thug of a husband, she still has to find the last one.’

Anna gave him a cold look. ‘If you hadn’t insisted on getting revenge on them, we could have paid another archaeologist. Chase being at the museum in Berlin proves that someone else could have worked it out.’

The ex-president glowered at her, displeased that anyone would challenge him, but was interrupted by Nina before he could reply. ‘The Altar of Zeus was the easiest to connect to what John wrote in Revelation,’ she said. ‘Finding the one in the catacombs in Rome was much harder — and there was a hell of a lot of luck involved as well.’

Simeon’s unfriendly gaze turned upon her. ‘I knew she was sandbagging us. If she’d told us about Berlin first, we would have gotten the angel without our entire team being wiped out!’

‘You think the statue in Berlin would have been sitting on a desk waiting for you if Eddie hadn’t gone there?’ she countered. ‘Someone with a great deal of knowledge of the altar found it for him, and you don’t get that by waving guns around.’

Cross raised a hand to silence the argument. ‘Her husband’s on the way with the angel now.’

‘You’re sure?’ asked Dalton.

‘I checked with a contact of mine at Langley. He left Berlin on a United Nations flight this morning; it lands at VC Bird this afternoon.’ He looked to his right-hand man. ‘We’ll be there to meet him — with backup.’

‘If you hurt him, I’ll never cooperate with you,’ said Nina.

‘That’s up to him,’ Cross replied. ‘But I get the feeling Mr Chase isn’t the type to give up without a fight.’

‘You’re goddamn right about that,’ muttered Dalton.

‘If he fights us, he dies,’ Simeon said flatly.

Again Cross waved for silence. ‘I’m not worried about the third angel. It’s the fourth one that concerns me — the one hidden in the Place in the Wilderness. We need to find it, soon.’

‘Why?’ Nina demanded. ‘Are you on a timetable?’

He gave her a patronising shake of the head. ‘You’ve read Revelation, but you haven’t taken it in. So many things in it happen according to a schedule set by God.’

‘Yeah, I remember.’ She indicated the Fishers. ‘How long have your Witnesses been prophesying? They only get one thousand, two hundred and sixty days of walking around in sackcloth before people get fed up of their yammering and kill them.’

‘And then they are reborn.’ Cross lifted his head, looking up not at the ceiling but at the heavens beyond. ‘After that… the seventh angel shall sound.’

Nina could only respond with sarcasm. ‘And God lets you in on all his secrets.’ She turned to Dalton. ‘And you get cheered back into the White House, and Charlie Brown finally kicks that football. I know which I think’s most likely to happen. Hint: it involves a cartoon kid with a big head.’

‘There’s something else you know, isn’t there, Dr Wilde?’ said Cross. The change in his tone made her suddenly uneasy; he sounded extremely confident. ‘The location of the last angel.’ His pale eyes fixed on to hers, as if drilling into her soul for the truth.

‘There’s nothing to find,’ she replied, trying to conceal her nervousness. ‘Even if you’re right about it being in the Place in the Wilderness — which you might well be, considering you’re two for two so far — the clues are too vague to pin down. You could be looking at practically anywhere in the Middle East, from Egypt all the way over to Iraq.’

‘But your research suggests that you’ve narrowed it down to the route of the Exodus.’

Nina felt even more unsettled. Everything about Cross’s attitude implied that he somehow knew about her own personal revelation before the escape attempt. But that was impossible. Her notes, her internet usage, even the pages of the reference books she had checked — none could have given it away. ‘That was just a possibility, and it’s not as if I’m the only person to have thought of it.’

Cross stared down at the redhead for a moment, then descended from the pulpit to stand in front of her. ‘Then explain why, at ten thirteen this morning, you had a sudden surge of adrenalin.’

She looked back in confusion. ‘I… what?’

‘Those aren’t just video cameras in your house. We monitor your heartbeat, respiration, temperature, perspiration, even involuntary eye response, all remotely. It’s the same gear the CIA uses. I can track every tiny physical fluctuation of your body and know what you’re feeling even before you’re consciously aware of it.’ An unpleasant smile, then he took a single step closer. Nina tried to back away, but Norvin moved to block her. ‘Now. The response you had was exactly consistent with that of somebody who’s just made a great discovery… and then immediately tried to hide it.’

‘The CIA’s been doing this for a long time,’ Dalton chipped in. ‘They really can tell what you’re thinking.’

‘It’s not mind-reading,’ continued Cross, ‘not yet. But it’s the next best thing. So, what did you find?’

‘I didn’t find anything,’ Nina insisted.

He loomed closer, their faces just a few inches apart, then abruptly drew away to walk across the church. ‘My mission in life has always been about seeking the truth, Dr Wilde. The truth of individuals, of nations, of God. So I find it almost personally offensive when someone tries to keep that truth from me. Don’t insult me by trying to deny it,’ he snapped as she opened her mouth to do just that. ‘Even if you don’t know exactly where the angel is, you know which area to search.’ He turned to face her. ‘And now you’re going to tell me.’

‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’

He came back towards her, eyes narrowing to threatening slits. ‘But you do know. So I’m going to give you a very simple choice. Either you tell me…’ His right hand slipped inside his robes — and drew a slim steel dagger. ‘Or I’ll kill your baby.’

The room closed in around Nina as he held up the knife. She looked to the others, but found no support. Only Dalton was anything other than stone-faced, the former president clearly shocked. ‘You — you wouldn’t,’ she gasped.

‘I will if I have to,’ he told her, advancing slowly. She tried to flee, but Norvin grabbed her. ‘I don’t want to. I consider the murder of the unborn a sin against the Lord. But the mission God has given me is more important than one innocent life. I’ll make it quick and painless for the child. One stab will do it. You won’t need more than minor treatment to survive.’

‘You’re insane!’ Nina cried, desperately trying to pull free of Norvin’s hold. ‘You’re out of your fucking mind! Dalton — Mr President!’ she wailed. ‘You can’t possibly agree with this!’

Dalton stared back, for once at a loss for words. ‘I — this shouldn’t, but…’ he stammered, before jumping to his feet. ‘For God’s sake, Nina! Tell him!’

Cross stopped in front of her. He lowered the dagger towards her belly—

‘All right!’ she screamed. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you! Just don’t hurt my baby, please!’

He blinked, almost as if emerging from a trance, then retreated and passed the knife to Simeon. ‘I’m glad you did that, Dr Wilde.’

‘For God’s sake, Ezekiel!’ said Dalton, appalled.

‘I’m not proud of myself, but it had to be done,’ Cross told him. He looked back at the trembling Nina. ‘Now. Where is the fourth angel?’

She still wanted to resist, but knew he had no compunctions about carrying out his threat. ‘The woman…’ she croaked, mouth bone-dry. She struggled to draw saliva, then spoke again. ‘From Revelation — the woman with the moon under her feet…’

‘Chapter twelve, verse one,’ said Cross, nodding. ‘“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”’

‘I realised what the part about the moon is referring to. The Wilderness of Sin.’

‘Sin?’ Dalton echoed. He had returned to his seat, visibly disturbed by what had just happened. The former politician had been more than willing to order the use of violence by others, but the prospect of actually witnessing it in person had shaken him.

‘A region the Israelites passed through during the Exodus,’ Cross told him.

‘It’s nothing to do with sinfulness,’ continued Nina. ‘Sin was the name of a Semitic deity — one of the gods worshipped by the ancient Jews before they became monotheistic followers of Yahweh. That’s God, if you didn’t know.’

‘Yes, I know. I’m not completely ignorant,’ Dalton growled.

‘Sin was a moon god; what was written in Revelation is sometimes interpreted as a reference to the other gods being trampled underfoot as Yahweh became dominant, but it could literally mean walking over the desert named after him. Now, there’s also a mention of this woman — the Woman of the Apocalypse, as she’s known — going to a place prepared by God.’

‘“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God”,’ said Cross.

‘Yeah. But I thought about what that might actually mean. It could be that God picked a spot and made it safe for her to stay. Or, more likely, that it was already an important religious site, which at some earlier point had been prepared, sanctified, whatever. Somewhere the Israelites had set up camp during the Exodus. I think that’s what the reference to the twelve stars means — the twelve wells they found as they travelled across the desert.’

The cult leader nodded. ‘That’s a fairly common interpretation.’

‘So the angel is in some sort of temple in this Wilderness of Sin?’ asked Dalton. ‘How hard will that be to find?’

Cross gave him a patronising smile. ‘Quite hard, Mr President. Nobody actually knows where the Wilderness of Sin is.’

‘It’s generally considered to be the region between Elim — the location of the twelve wells — and Mount Sinai, where Moses received the tablets containing the Ten Commandments from God,’ Nina explained. ‘Except nobody knows which mountain that is any more. It’s extremely unlikely that it’s the modern-day Mount Sinai in Egypt, because that location doesn’t fit any of the descriptions of the journey in Exodus or other books of the Torah or the Bible.’

‘So how does that help us?’ Dalton demanded.

‘I think she knows something more, Mr President.’ Cross turned back to Nina, awaiting an answer.

‘It’s only a theory,’ she insisted.

‘A theory you thought was important enough to hide. So tell us.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Okay. There’s a list in the Old Testament of the places the Israelites visited during the Exodus.’

‘The Book of Numbers,’ said Cross.

‘Right. I think there are forty-two stations?’ Another nod. ‘They start out in Egypt, and after forty years in the wilderness end up on the Moab plains, in modern-day Jordan. But the part that caught my attention is the journey from the Wilderness of Sin to a place called Dophkah.’

‘Numbers chapter thirty-three, verse twelve: “And they took their journey out of the Wilderness of Sin, and encamped in Dophkah.”’

‘Dophkah is in the Timna Valley, in southern Israel,’ said Nina. ‘Part of the Arabah desert. It’s an archaeological site — copper’s been mined there since at least the tenth century BC. That gives us a specific location to use as a starting point.’

Cross gestured towards the doors behind the pulpit. ‘Show me.’

The group went into the control room. He brought up a map on the video wall, zooming in on Israel to centre upon the Timna Valley. ‘There’s your starting point, Dr Wilde,’ he said. ‘Now where do we look?’

‘That’s a whole lot of nothing,’ Dalton remarked. Highways ran parallel to Israel’s eastern and western borders, heading to the country’s southern tip at the Red Sea, but between them the map was almost empty.

Cross tapped at a touch pad. The view changed to a satellite image. Features appeared, but they were all natural: rugged desert hills and mountains, their colours a universally arid sandy-brown. ‘Numbers thirty-three eleven tells us that the Israelites came from the Red Sea, so this’ — he swept a hand over the area south of Timna — ‘must be the Wilderness of Sin.’

‘Big area to cover,’ said Simeon. ‘Even if we stick inside the Israeli borders, that’s got to be a hundred square miles of desert.’

‘But it’s there somewhere,’ Cross said to Nina. ‘It’s all in Revelation. The moon is a reference to Sin; the twelve stars tie it to the Exodus. It makes sense. And following your line of thinking about an important religious site, the “place prepared of God” is most likely somewhere that the Israelites set up the Tabernacle. Yes?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes,’ she replied. The Tabernacle was a portable shrine carried by the Israelites on their journey, containing their holiest treasures, including the Ark of the Covenant. ‘If they stayed at this place for some time, they could have set up a semi-permanent place of worship.’

Dalton took a closer look at the satellite view. ‘Why would anyone stay in that godforsaken hellhole?’

‘Because God gave them what they needed to survive,’ said Cross. ‘He provided water to drink, and manna to eat.’

‘There’s been water there in the past,’ Nina added. She pointed out channels cut into the mountains. ‘And that’s how I know what to look for.’

All eyes turned to her. ‘Well?’ said Dalton impatiently. ‘Tell us!’

‘It’s all there in Revelation,’ she answered. ‘Distorted as usual, coded, but John’s still telling us what he learned in Pergamon. The Woman of the Apocalypse was pursued into the wilderness by a dragon — one of the guises of Satan. God protected her, helped her reach the place prepared for her—’

‘“And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place”,’ Cross cut in.

‘But he also defended her while she was there,’ Nina went on. ‘She was pregnant, and the dragon wanted to devour her child right after it was born. He failed, but sent a flood to kill her in revenge. And I’m sure you’re about to give me the relevant quote,’ she said to Cross.

‘Chapter twelve, verse fifteen,’ he said. ‘But I’ll spare you the full text.’

‘Good. Because it’s the next verse that holds the answer. You can quote that to everyone if you like.’

He frowned, but recited the words. ‘“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.”’ A long pause, during which Cross and his followers exchanged glances, as if waiting for their own revelations. None came. ‘How does that help us?’ he demanded.

Nina gave him a faint but cutting smile. ‘It helps a lot, if you know something about geology as well as archaeology. Remember that John is describing his hallucinogenic interpretations of the Elders’ writings. They wrote about a flood — possibly a flash flood, which in the desert can happen miles from where any rain actually fell. But the earth opened up and swallowed it before it reached the Place in the Wilderness.’ She paused, waiting for a response. ‘Seriously? Did nobody do Geology 101? The only thing that could be is a sinkhole! A sinkhole swallowed the flood — and those things don’t just disappear. It’ll still be there!’

Realisation filled Cross’s eyes. ‘The sinkhole will mark the angel’s location!’

‘Finally!’ said Nina. ‘Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I worked out this morning. Somewhere in that desert’ — she gestured at the screens — ‘is a sinkhole, either near or actually in a water channel. And somewhere very close to that… is your last angel.’

Everyone regarded the satellite map. ‘So how do we find it?’ asked Dalton.

‘Hell if I know,’ she snorted. ‘If there are any more clues in Revelation, I haven’t figured them out. I don’t know who the Woman of the Apocalypse is meant to represent, or what the reference to her being “clothed with the sun” means. She’s pregnant — for all I know, it’s a prophecy about me.’ She indicated her bulge, before remembering Cross’s threat and putting her arms protectively over it.

‘We don’t need any more clues,’ Cross decided. ‘We can locate all the sinkholes in the region from the satellite imagery, then find any archaeological traces near them from the air.’

‘Oh, you can, can you?’ Nina said scathingly. ‘Maybe I should have traded my PhD for a pilot’s licence.’

He ignored the comment. ‘We know we’re looking at waterways, so that’ll cut down the area we need to check.’ He turned to Dalton. ‘I know people in Israel who can get us free access to their airspace, and hopefully even provide military assistance if we need it. If you can call on your diplomatic contacts to get us into the country without drawing attention…’

‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘But that’s the fourth angel — what about the third one?’

‘We’ll have it soon. Simeon? Get some people and meet Mr Chase at the airport.’ He faced Nina again. ‘If your husband’s sensible and hands over the angel, I’ll let him live.’ Simeon clearly did not approve, but said nothing. ‘I can be magnanimous.’

‘I can’t,’ she replied with cold anger. ‘You were going to kill my baby. That’s not something I’m willing to forgive. If I ever get the chance… I’ll kill you.’

She couldn’t tell if the threat had affected Cross or not. ‘Take her away,’ was all he said.