The Revelation Code

27

‘God,’ whispered Nina, adding: ‘Literally.’

Jared stared open-mouthed. ‘It… it’s the Ark,’ he managed to say. ‘It really is the Ark of the Covenant!’

Eddie whistled a few bars of ‘The Raiders March’. ‘We need our own cool theme tune,’ he said. ‘This is it? The real thing?’ Nina nodded. ‘Bloody hell! This is a massive find — and you weren’t even looking for it!’

‘No, but here it is.’ Awed, Nina circled the relic. It did not quite match the popular image from classical paintings and a certain Steven Spielberg movie, the smaller details differing, but it perfectly fitted the description given in the Biblical Book of Exodus. The main body of the gold-covered chest was a little under four feet long, finely detailed patterns similar to those in the Jewish catacombs and the tunnel outside inscribed into the plating. Rings of the precious metal supported two long poles on each side, covered in gold leaf.

Atop the Ark was the mercy seat. Despite what the name suggested, it was not a place of rest, rather an elaborate lid. A pair of cherubim stood upon it. Two of each of their four wings extended backwards, meeting above the centre of the chest. She peered at one of the cherubim, feeling a thrill of recognition as she saw the face of the angel — rather, the faces, plural. Both creatures had four positioned around their heads, each looking in a different direction: a lion, an ox, an eagle and a man. She had seen the same arrangement on the mechanical guardians of the Garden of Eden. The image had been remembered and passed down over many millennia as a symbol of fearsome, godly power.

She stepped back, almost overcome by excitement at the magnificence of the find — before remembering that it was not why she was there. She reluctantly turned away to cast her light around the rest of the room. ‘There’s nothing else in here?’

‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Jared confirmed.

‘Then the angel must be in the Ark.’ She produced a camera and took several photos for the record, then returned to the chest, suppressing her professional disquiet at what she was about to do. ‘Can you lift the lid?’

Now it was Eddie’s turn to hesitate. ‘You sure? You know what’s supposed to happen if you open this thing. Lightning, firestorms, melting Nazis…’

‘And I thought you weren’t superstitious.’

‘No, but I’m movie-stitious.’

‘We don’t have a choice — the clues to the angel’s location in Revelation pointed here. Cross is already in Israel, and sooner or later he’ll realise he needs to widen his search, so we’ve got to get it out of here before that happens. We can’t leave it and hope that he gets melted when he opens it.’

‘Maybe I should close my eyes,’ Eddie grumbled, but he moved to one end of the chest. Jared gave Nina an uncertain look, but went to the other. The Englishman warily tapped one of the poles before risking touching the lid itself. ‘Not struck dead on the spot. That’s a start.’

‘Okay,’ said Nina, ‘now very carefully, lift it up.’

The two men strained to raise the mercy seat. ‘It’s heavy,’ grunted Jared. ‘The statues must be solid gold.’ They pulled harder.

With a scrape of metal, the Ark of the Covenant began to open.

The Bell 430 continued its monotonous search of the empty desert. Dalton made a show of checking his watch for the third time in as many minutes. ‘How much fuel has this damn thing got left?’ he complained.

‘We’ll go back to Ovda after we check the next valley,’ Cross replied. ‘Then you can get out. I’m sure that’ll be a relief.’ For everyone, he didn’t need to add.

‘Just remember that you wouldn’t even be here without my help,’ Dalton snapped. ‘I was the one who told you Nina Wilde was the best person to find the angels, I got you into Israel without—’

‘There’s someone down there!’ Simeon barked. The ex-politician was instantly forgotten as all eyes went to the windows. ‘I can see a truck.’ He raised his binoculars as Paxton slowed the helicopter. ‘No sign of anybody with it.’

Cross brought up his own field glasses. Sunlight flashed off the windows of a 4x4 parked near the foot of a cliff. He looked up the sheer rock face, spotting the faint line of a rope. It led to a narrow yet tall cleft in the massif, a very thin pass snaking away to…

‘A sinkhole,’ he said, seeing what lay at its end. ‘There’s a sinkhole on that mountain.’

Dalton craned his neck to peer at the landscape below. ‘It can’t be the one we’re looking for. I thought we were checking the valleys, not the hills.’

‘We were,’ said Cross with growing realisation. ‘And we were wrong!’ He snapped the binoculars back to the cliff. Faint sparkles in the rock marked where the intense sunlight glanced off copper deposits. ‘It reflects the sun. “Clothed with the sun” — that’s what John meant! And you’d need the wings of eagles to get up there…’

‘Wilde lied to us?’ said Anna.

‘Maybe — or she hadn’t figured it out when she told us where to look. But she has now. She’s down there!’

‘Wilde’s here?’ said Dalton, disbelieving. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s her. I’m certain.’ He turned to the pilot. ‘Paxton, bring us down as close to the sinkhole as possible.’

Dalton became even more unhappy. ‘We’re not going back to refuel?’

‘We won’t need to. The angel’s down there.’

‘And so are Wilde and Chase,’ Simeon reminded him.

‘Not for long,’ said Cross as the helicopter began its descent.

Nina watched with nervous anticipation as the mercy seat was inched upwards.

‘Almost there,’ Eddie told Jared. ‘Move it over on three.’

Jared nodded. The Yorkshireman counted down, then with loud grunts they shuffled sideways to set it down on the stone floor with a heavy clunk.

Nina leaned over the chest to see what was inside. Her flashlight beam found the very items named by legend. A scroll, supposedly the first part of the Torah, written by Moses himself; a wooden staff, which she took to be the rod of Aaron, brother of Moses; an earthenware jar, which had contained some of the manna sent by God to feed the Israelites in the desert… and two flat slabs of stone, inscribed with ancient Hebrew text.

Her heart quickened. She was looking at the tablets holding the original Ten Commandments.

But she forced herself to ignore them for now. There was one more relic inside the Ark.

The fourth angel.

It was of the same design as the other two she had seen, a dense ceramic body shrouded by metallic wings. The head of this figure was that of a man, his brow creased in stern warning. She carefully lifted it out, feeling the weight of the deadly meteoric material trapped in its core. ‘That’s what you’re looking for?’ Jared asked.

Nina nodded. ‘The last angel — the last harbinger of the apocalypse, if you believe Cross. But we’ve beaten him to it. Whatever he had planned, he can’t go ahead with it without this.’

‘Unless he decides, “You know what? Bollocks to it, I’m going to do it anyway”,’ Eddie said grimly. ‘He’s still got one angel he can release somewhere.’

‘I know.’ She held up the statue. ‘But at least we can secure this—’

She broke off as she saw dust motes falling through the flashlight beams, the first few specks quickly joined by more, and more, drifting from the tent’s roof. ‘What’s doing that?’ Eddie demanded. He glanced at the Ark. ‘We haven’t bloody brought down the fury of God and the wrath of sixty special-effects people, have we?’

‘It’s outside,’ said Jared. A deep rumbling sound gradually rose in intensity.

Still holding the statue, Nina hurried back through the veil. More dust was falling in the tent’s outer room, scraps of rotted fabric dropping to the floor. She pushed through the curtain into the throne chamber. The noise grew louder—

The light coming through the giant opal in the ceiling suddenly flickered. A moment later, a shadow passing over the crack above briefly plunged the room into darkness. Then the illumination returned to its spectacular norm, but the bass rumble continued.

‘It’s a chopper!’ Eddie said. The aircraft had gone right overhead, coming in to land on the mountain above them.

‘Cross,’ said Nina. ‘It’s Cross!’

‘How do you know?’ asked Jared.

‘Because who else would it be? This always frickin’ happens to us!’

Eddie drew the Desert Eagle. ‘Looks like I’ll find out if this thing’s as good as my Wildey.’

Jared produced his own, smaller gun. ‘We need to get out of here.’

‘We’ll never get clear,’ Nina realised. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to climb down the cliff and back to the jeep in time. And even if we could, they’ve got a helicopter! We can’t outrun them.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Chuck that thing in the sinkhole,’ Eddie suggested, nodding at the angel. ‘They won’t have brought scuba gear. It’ll take ’em ages to find it, if they ever do.’

‘Yes, but we’ll probably be dead!’ the Israeli objected.

‘And they might still find it,’ added Nina. ‘We don’t know how deep the sinkhole is — if it’s only ten feet, it won’t take them long to search the bottom.’

‘Then drop it off the bridge down the big shaft,’ Eddie persisted.

‘But if it breaks, then as far as Cross is concerned the angel has been released, and he wins.’

‘What, then?’ he demanded, exasperated. ‘We can’t run, there’s nowhere to hide the thing, and if we smash it, that’s the same as letting him get it? What the bloody hell are we supposed to do?’

‘I don’t know!’ She turned her eyes to the refracted daylight coming through the ceiling as the noise of the helicopter settled… then began to die down. It had landed, the pilot shutting off the engines. ‘You’re SAS,’ she told Eddie, turning back to the two men, ‘and Jared, you’re Mossad — what would you do?’

The question galvanised the younger man. ‘They’ll have seen our truck — it’s probably what made them land — so they know we’re here. They’ll expect an ambush.’

Eddie nodded in agreement. ‘We’ll have to decoy them.’

‘Yeah. But how?’

The Englishman looked back at the tent. ‘If Cross is such a Bible-basher, he’ll know what that is, and what’s inside. We need to keep his attention on it.’ A moment’s thought, then: ‘There’s an app for that.’

Simeon swung down from the lip of the sinkhole into the sheltered cave beneath, whipping up his MP5 sub-machine gun and sweeping it across the entrances. Nobody moved within them. He brought his left forefinger to the trigger of the M203 grenade launcher mounted under the weapon’s barrel, ready to fire a shrapnel-filled high-explosive round at any hint of activity.

Still nothing stirred. He took cover beside the right-most opening as more of his men dropped down and spread out to check the other archways. ‘Clear,’ one soon reported. The others gave the same message.

Simeon cast a wary eye into the underground chamber before moving to look up to the surface. ‘Nobody here.’

Cross, Anna and Dalton gazed back down at him. ‘Good,’ said the cult leader. He lowered himself to the cave, Anna following. ‘What have we got?’

‘Four entrances. I don’t know which they took.’

Cross surveyed the arches, then pointed at the left-most. ‘That one, with the symbol of the twenty-four Elders. Prepare to move in.’

‘Hey!’ came an aggrieved shout from above. ‘You going to leave me up here?’

‘Simeon, Norvin, help Mr Dalton down,’ said Cross, the upward flick of his eyes as much a disparaging roll as an indication of the disgraced politician’s location. Simeon let out a sound of contempt, then he and the bodyguard took up positions to catch Dalton as he clumsily clambered over the edge.

Even with their support, the ex-president touched down with a thump. He shook himself free of them. ‘All right, I’m here,’ he announced. ‘Now, what’s the situation?’

‘They’re down there,’ Cross told him, going to the entrance. One of his men, a jut-jawed blond named Hatch, crouched to examine the floor; faint footsteps in the dust confirmed his leader’s statement.

‘And what else is down there?’

‘The angel, is all I can say for sure. Other than that…’ He regarded the symbol above the opening with intense curiosity, then signalled for his team to advance.

Simeon took point, Norvin behind him. The others followed in single file. They cautiously made their way up the sloping passage, listening for sounds of activity. But they heard none. It wasn’t until they reached the growths of mushrooms that Cross broke the silence. ‘Manna?’ he wondered in a whisper, pausing for a closer look.

‘Sir!’ Simeon hissed. ‘I heard voices — and there’s something up ahead.’

The mushrooms forgotten, Cross made his way to the front of the group, joining Simeon at the edge of the cenote. The cult leader aimed his flashlight into the depths, revealing water a long way below. His right-hand man, meanwhile, used his own light to track the rope across the rickety bridge. ‘Through there,’ he said, seeing the open doorway.

‘I hear them,’ Cross murmured. Two people were speaking; the words were indistinct, but one voice was male… and the other female. ‘It’s Wilde.’

Simeon raised his MP5, aiming the grenade launcher at the doorway, but Cross pushed it down. ‘No! You might damage the angel. We need it intact.’

Anna listened to the voices. The discussion seemed casual, unworried. ‘They don’t know we’re here.’

‘It could still be an ambush,’ her husband warned. ‘And I don’t like the look of this bridge.’

‘They got across it; so can we,’ said Cross. He tested the rope. It held.

Dalton squeezed past the other team members. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Simeon growled. Dalton twitched in anger, but the African-American went on: ‘They’re on the other side of this shaft. We’ve got to get across without letting them know we’re here.’

‘Norvin, you go over first,’ Cross told his bodyguard. ‘If the tunnel on the far side is clear, cover it while the rest of us follow.’

Norvin nodded, slinging his MP5 and taking hold of the rope. He sidestepped across the bridge. His companions watched with growing anxiety, a few stifled gasps escaping when the structure swayed under his weight, but after steadying himself he was able to continue on to firm ground. He quickly readied his gun and checked the tunnel, then signalled that the way was clear.

‘Maybe you should wait here,’ Cross suggested to Dalton.

‘Like hell,’ Dalton replied. ‘I want to see the look on Wilde and Chase’s faces when we take the angel from them.’

‘As you wish.’ The white-clad man turned his back on him, waiting for Simeon to cross before starting his own journey. ‘Come over after Anna. Hatch, watch out for him.’

One by one the group traversed the cenote. By the time the last man made it, Cross had already instructed Simeon and Norvin to advance. They crept along the decorated passage, guns raised. The voices became louder as they neared its end. ‘I see lights,’ Simeon whispered.

‘Careful,’ said Cross, but he was already almost unconsciously increasing his pace, glimpsing wonders waiting ahead. Gold glinted under a strange rainbow glow. He forced himself to slow and listen. ‘It’s definitely them.’

Nina’s voice reached him. ‘… way beyond what I’d expected to find. I mean, we came looking for the angel, but to discover this as well? It’s incredible.’

‘Yeah.’ The other speaker was Eddie Chase. Simeon’s hands tightened on his weapon, while Dalton gulped faintly, his mouth suddenly dry.

‘This will change Biblical archaeology for ever,’ Nina went on. ‘It’s quite possibly the biggest thing I’ve ever discovered. The actual Ark of the Covenant, intact, and in God’s temple as described in the Book of Revelation? Amazing!’

‘Uh-huh,’ came the reply.

Simeon reached the entrance, silently panning his gun across the chamber. The voices were coming from a tent at the far end, lights glinting through thin patches in its ancient coverings. ‘They’re in that,’ he said, his own voice barely above the volume of a breath. ‘Room’s clear.’

‘The Tabernacle…’ Cross whispered, astounded. The cult leader entered the room, then stepped aside to let his armed followers past as Dalton stood beside him. He knew where he was, almost overcome by religious awe at the sight of God’s throne beneath the shaft of spectral light, but managed to restrain his wonderment. His first priority was securing the angel.

Which would be easy. The archaeologist was still talking, her husband muttering the occasional reply. Cross issued an order: ‘Take them.’

Simeon took command, using hand signals to direct the others towards the tent. The men spread out to surround it, while Anna hung back inside the circle of thrones to cover a wider area. The African-American silently made his way to the entrance, reaching out to pull back the curtains…

‘Ay up.’

The voice came not from the tent — but from behind Cross and Dalton.