The Last Secret of the Ark

by James Becker

  ‘Perfectly,’ Chason replied. ‘And thank you for your help. My masters back in Jerusalem will be very appreciative.’

  In Chason’s hotel room, Josef Gellerman and Lemuel Dayan were looking at the latest information supplied in an encrypted email from Zeru, the data obviously having been obtained from a contact in the Mossad. Gellerman guessed that a low-priority watch order had been placed on Bronson and Lewis. They now knew the arrival time of the flight the two targets had been on, the hotel where they’d spent the night, and details of the car that Bronson had hired the following morning.

  ‘The trouble is, we’re playing catch-up,’ Dayan said. ‘This isn’t like Britain, with a traffic camera on every corner so you can track somebody. Over here, the traffic cameras just cover junctions or stretches of freeway and are only useful for seeing how the traffic is flowing, not for following an individual car. We’ll have to wait until they book a hotel for the night and follow them from there.’

  When Chason returned carrying a brown leather briefcase, they each took one of the pistols and checked it. They were all in excellent condition, virtually as new, and the man who had supplied them had refused to accept any form of payment, being happy to help people who were doing something for the homeland of his grandparents and parents. They loaded the weapons and the spare magazines, and then settled down to wait for the information from Israel that would allow them to continue the chase.

  Chapter 51

  Taunton, Massachusetts, United States of America

  ‘So what’s with this well that isn’t a well?’ Bronson asked. ‘And why did you pick Taunton? Just because it has a nice friendly English name, or was there another reason?’

  They’d pulled off the main road back to Boston and found a smallish but quite comfortable hotel on the outskirts of Taunton. Angela had logged her laptop into the building’s Wi-Fi and was beginning to trawl the Internet, doing more research.

  She glanced over at him. ‘You’re right about English names,’ she replied. ‘We’re just outside Taunton, and within a fairly short driving distance there’s a Bridgewater, a Halifax, a Kingston and a Plymouth, so the names are familiar even if the landscape isn’t. I picked Taunton because it wasn’t that long a drive, but also because it’s one of the very few locations I’ve found where there’s a river that flows almost due south. That fits neatly with the Latin phrase ubi flumen currit ad meridiem, but Taunton is only “halfway between the coasts”, the medium inter finibus bit, if you use quite a lot of poetic licence and assume that the north coast is part of the bay where Boston stands. The whole expression suggests to me that the two coasts are supposed to be either side of a landmass, and that means we should be looking for an island or a peninsula. That’s why I wanted to explore Rhode Island.’

  ‘Which didn’t help. And you still haven’t told me about this blasted well.’

  ‘That’s the last clue from the parchment,’ Angela said. ‘The Latin phrase reads sub puteus quod no habet aqua. Sub means below or underneath and a puteus is a hole dug to find water, so the whole expression translates as “beneath the well that has no water”, and I don’t really know what that means. It could be referring to a well located on high ground and telling us to look on the low-lying terrain nearby. Or, because a puteus can just be an exploratory hole dug to try to find water, rather than a functioning well, perhaps we should be looking for some kind of abandoned working. Or is it a dry well, a well that once produced water but the supply has now dried up? Strictly speaking, the Latin for a well is puteum fodere, which is not what this says, and the other translation for puteus is a pit, the sort of place you’d use to store grain.

  ‘The short, snappy answer is I don’t really know what this means, so I’m trying to think of all the possible permutations on maps and documents on the Internet that might help clarify it.’

  ‘So you need to find a place that’s on an island or a promontory, more or less in the middle of it coast to coast, where there might be a hill and definitely a river that flows south from that position. And where there might also be a well or something that looks like a well. Is that a fair summary?’

  Angela nodded. ‘That’s pretty much nailed it, yes.’

  ‘Right. You’ve got the Latin and the background historical information, so you dig away at that. As befits a simple soul like me, I’ll just look at the pretty pictures of maps and stuff on my phone and see if I can find anything that fits the bill.’

  About twenty minutes later, Bronson looked across at Angela with a slight smile on his face.

  ‘I don’t know if this is the right location,’ he said, ‘but it does seem to tick most of the boxes you told me about.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  He passed her his smartphone, and she used her fingertips to manoeuvre the image around the screen and increase and decrease its size as she studied it.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That does fit with everything we’ve got from the parchment. I just didn’t expect it to be there. I was sure we’d find it somewhere here, in Massachusetts or maybe Rhode Island, because the Newport Tower more or less proves Sinclair’s party must have spent quite some time in the area.’

  ‘True, but if the information on that plaque by the Westford Knight is accurate, Sinclair and his men would have wintered in Nova Scotia, and that would have given them time to create this vault or whatever it is.’

  ‘Well it’s worth a look, no matter what. It doesn’t look that far. Can we drive there?’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘It’s further than you think,’ he said, calculating distances quickly. ‘I reckon it’s nearly seven hundred miles by road, so we’d be looking at ten or twelve hours’ driving at least. It’d be a lot quicker, and a whole lot easier, to fly. I’ll just check how often flights head that way out of Boston.’

  Five minutes later, he looked up.

  ‘If we’d worked this out earlier, we could have hopped a flight today,’ he said. ‘The flight time’s only an hour and three quarters, and there’s an evening flight leaving at about half past six. But we’ve got to drive back to Boston and hand over the hire car and still get to the airport in time to hang around for two completely bloody pointless hours waiting to go through security. We don’t have enough time. Simple as that.’

  ‘And there’s another delay,’ Angela said. ‘We can’t catch a flight today because we haven’t yet got our Canadian eTAs.’

  ‘Our what?’

  ‘Electronic Travel Authorisations. I did the application process while you were fiddling about looking at flights, but I haven’t yet had confirmation they’ve been approved. We can’t get on board an aircraft until we have them. I presume the next flight will be tomorrow. What time does it leave?’

  Bronson checked his phone again.

  ‘Inconveniently early,’ he said. ‘The scheduled departure time is ten past nine, and it arrives at about ten minutes to twelve. I know that sounds like a two-and-three-quarter-hour flight, but it’s not. The time in Halifax is one hour different to Boston. At least this time I shouldn’t get jet lag.’

  ‘Is that the only flight?’

  ‘It’s the only one I’d want to take. There are two others around midday, but one goes via Toronto and the other via Toronto and Washington, so they take all day to get there. But it does mean we can’t stay here in Taunton. I’ll book us a room at the Hilton for tonight so we’re on the spot, but we’ll still have to be up by six tomorrow morning.’

  Angela’s phone emitted a faintly irritating beeping noise, and she opened the message.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Both our eTAs have been approved, so you can book two seats on that aircraft tomorrow morning while you’re at it. And then find us somewhere to stay in Halifax.’

  Twenty minutes later, they were back on the road, heading for Boston’s Logan International Airport and the on-site Hilton.

  * * *

  Tucked invisibly into the line of a dozen or so cars behind them were the Honda and Toyota
that had been shadowing them all day. The man in the Toyota was again talking to Cardinal Caravaggio in the centre of Rome, but even as he provided the non-productive update on the activities of the targets, Caravaggio interrupted him. Other information had reached him from an entirely different source.

  ‘They’re heading back to the Hilton at Logan airport and they’ve booked a flight to Halifax tomorrow morning,’ he said.

  ‘Do you want us to follow them to Nova Scotia?’

  ‘No thank you. I’m making other arrangements for that. Just follow them back to the hotel and report to me immediately if they stop anywhere en route. Once they’ve handed back their hire car, you can stand down. And thank you.’

  The man in the Toyota nodded to himself as he ended the call. That day’s work – if that was the right noun to apply to driving about Massachusetts and Rhode Island keeping the back end of a small Buick in sight – had been the easiest two thousand bucks he and the man driving the Honda had ever earned.

  It was just a shame that neither of them would get to claim the fifty grand promised by the anonymous man in Italy if he’d ordered them to take out the targets.

  Chapter 52

  Massachusetts, United States of America

  ‘We’ve got them,’ Lemuel Dayan said, looking at a priority email that had just appeared in his inbox. ‘They’ve booked into a hotel in a place called Taunton.’

  ‘Where the hell’s that?’ Gellerman asked, looking over Dayan’s shoulder at the screen of the laptop.

  Dayan used Google Maps to display Massachusetts and then pointed.

  ‘There,’ he replied. ‘Down towards Rhode Island. Probably about thirty-five or forty miles from here.’

  All three men had been prepared to leave the hotel at very short notice, and the only thing they had unpacked was Dayan’s laptop. In less than ten minutes they’d vacated their rooms, checked out of the hotel and were sitting in their hire car and navigating their way through Boston’s busy streets, Gellerman at the wheel.

  Getting to Taunton and finding the hotel took them just under an hour. It wasn’t a large establishment, and the first thing they did was look around the car park to try to spot the Buick Encore that they knew Bronson had hired at the airport. There were only about a dozen cars there, but that definitely wasn’t one of them.

  ‘They’ve probably gone off somewhere,’ Chason suggested, which didn’t help.

  ‘Exactly,’ Gellerman said, pulling their car into a parking space. ‘We can follow their electronic trail easily enough, but we need to see them to be able to follow where they go and watch what they do. Wait here. I’ll go inside and see if they’re in the public rooms anywhere.’

  There was no sign of the targets in the restaurant or lounge, which was not unexpected. If the car wasn’t at the hotel, there wasn’t much chance that the targets would be either. He decided to take a direct approach as a final check. He walked over to the reception desk and smiled pleasantly at the girl sitting behind it.

  ‘I was hoping to meet some friends of mine here,’ he said. ‘Chris Bronson and Angela Lewis. Do you know if they’ve checked in yet?’

  ‘Just a moment, sir.’ She tapped away briskly on the computer keyboard and then fiddled with the mouse. ‘Yes, they checked in earlier today, but they checked out again a couple of hours later. I think Mr Bronson said something about a family emergency.’

  Gellerman nodded, made what he hoped were appropriately sympathetic noises and walked briskly out of the hotel.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ he said as he opened the car door and sat down. ‘They checked in and then checked out again.’

  ‘Where did they go?’ Chason asked, then shook his head, realising it was a stupid question.

  Gellerman didn’t even bother responding, just looked at Dayan.

  ‘Make sure your mobile is switched on and the battery has plenty of charge. They’ve checked out of here but they certainly aren’t going to be sleeping in the car. They’ll have booked another hotel somewhere, and as soon as we know where it is, we’ll get back on the road.’

  Dayan looked at the screen of his smartphone to check his inbox, then shook his head.

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  He put the phone on the dashboard and connected the charging lead to the car’s USB power output. Then they settled down to wait, because there was nothing else they could do.

  Chapter 53

  Gatwick Airport, London, England

  Marco Ferrara had no idea whether the group of zealots from Zeru knew where the trail was now leading, or whether he and Rossi would meet any opposition when they finally reached their destination. But as they made themselves as comfortable as they could in the alleged executive lounge at London’s Gatwick airport, he was preparing for any contingency.

  ‘I’ll tell the cardinal we need weapons,’ he said quietly to Rossi, preparing a text message to send to Rome. ‘I’ll ask for a couple of pistols and a rifle as well, just in case. I’m sure the Inquisition will have some contacts over in Canada who can help.’

  ‘Good idea. I feel undressed without a pistol under my left arm. You want another drink?’

  Ferrara shook his head. ‘No. Once I’ve sent this, I’m going to try and get some sleep. You should too. Whatever happens, tomorrow is going to be a very long day.’

  The instructions from Cardinal Caravaggio had been clear enough: Ferrara and Rossi were to proceed at once to Nova Scotia in Canada, which was where the historians in Rome had decided the Latin text on the Aniort parchment referred to, and be prepared to travel onwards from there if necessary.

  There’d been a slight delay while they sorted out their Canadian eTAs, and American ESTAs for good measure just in case the search shifted to the south, but the delay hadn’t affected the availability of flights: the only one that hadn’t already been fully booked was the one they had taken. And at least that flight would get them to Halifax at midday, whereas the others all arrived mid evening.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that the aircraft flew direct from Toulouse to Gatwick and then disgorged its passengers there for an eleven-hour stopover before the hop to Halifax.

  The two men had used the time as best they could, pre-booking a hotel in Halifax, organising a hire car they could pick up at the airport, and looking at the scan of the parchment that had prompted the renewed search, and the first translation of it. They soon had a reasonable idea what they were likely to be looking for. What they didn’t know was exactly where they should be looking, but hopefully they’d get more information from Rome.

  And if all else failed, they could follow Bronson and Lewis, wait until they had found the Ark, then kill them both and grab the relic. That would work just as well and would probably be easier.

  Chapter 54

  Massachusetts, United States of America

  As it turned out, the three-man team from Zeru didn’t have that long to wait in the corner of the car park of the hotel in Taunton. About ninety minutes after they’d discovered that the birds had flown, Dayan received an email message, followed by two more over the next half an hour. The first confirmed that Bronson’s credit card had been used to book a room at the Hilton hotel at Boston’s international airport. That was enough for them to get moving and head back towards Boston, because now they knew exactly where the targets were going.

  The second message informed them that the same card had been used to book two seats on the following morning’s flight out of Boston to Halifax in Nova Scotia, and the third gave details of the hotel Bronson had booked in Halifax, and his hire car. That told the Israelis roughly where the search for the ancient relic would resume, but also created a problem.

  They now had three pistols and ammunition, and what they couldn’t do was get them on board an aircraft, not even in the hold luggage. The two choices they had were either to hand the weapons back to the man who’d supplied them and then fly to Halifax unarmed, or to keep them and drive up through New Hampshire and Maine, then cross the bor
der into New Brunswick in Canada and carry on to Nova Scotia. If they handed them back, they didn’t know how long they would have to wait before they could find an alternative source of weapons, and all three of them believed the endgame was near. So in the end it was a simple decision: they would keep the pistols and drive to Nova Scotia.

  What they would have to do well before they got anywhere near the border was to conceal the weapons and ammunition. They knew that if the car were to be subjected to a thorough examination, no hiding place would work and they would then be arrested. That was not a particularly daunting prospect, because Gellerman knew enough people in the government of Israel to ensure that they would be released, probably long before the case could come to trial. But it would mean the end of the operation, and that was not acceptable. So the pistols had to be concealed somewhere that wasn’t obvious.

  They stopped at a hardware store on the outskirts of Boston. Gellerman went inside and bought a craft knife, a roll of heavy-duty black duct tape, a set of thin nylon overalls, a small tub of hand cleanser and a roll of paper towels.

  They would find a secluded location ten miles or so from the border crossing point, somewhere well off the main road. Then Chason, who was the smallest and nimblest of the three of them, would don the overalls and crawl under the front end of the Buick, one side of it jacked up so he’d have a bit more room to manoeuvre. Gellerman thought the three loaded spare magazines could probably be taped onto the lower part of the steering column, and the pistols themselves could be attached to suspension components, or perhaps to the chassis subframe. It all depended on what Chason found when he got under the car. Duct tape was ideal because it was strong and very flexible, so it wouldn’t rip or tear while the car was moving. Obviously they’d drive slowly to minimise any strain on the tape, so it should hold.