The Last Secret of the Ark

by James Becker

  ‘Like the start of a lane, something like that?’

  ‘Exactly like that. Without a house at the end of it, obviously.’

  ‘There are several,’ Angela replied a minute or so later. ‘The one that looks least developed is Forties Road. That’s the turning opposite the white church in New Ross. There’s not much along that road once you get clear of the village. It looks like there are quite a few places along there.’ She looked at Bronson. ‘What are you planning?’ she demanded.

  ‘One way or another we need to lose the two people in that car behind us. I’m making this up as I go along, but we definitely need to find somewhere quiet. When I’ve worked out how to do it, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Well be careful. They might be armed – we just don’t know.’

  ‘I’m assuming that they are. Basic rule of combat: always assume that your opponent is better armed than you are, and more competent than you expect. Then you don’t get surprised.’

  The road, a ribbon of tarmac running through the forested landscape, was smooth and more or less straight, and with little traffic in either direction. On the outskirts of New Ross, they drove past the Ross Farm Museum and continued towards the village centre. When he saw the white church ahead of him, Bronson indicated and turned off the road, but not at the junction. Instead, he parked outside a cafe on the left-hand side of the road.

  Angela looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘We’ll grab a coffee and something to eat,’ he said, ‘but that’s not why I’ve stopped. We’re not dressed for tramping about the woods, so we’ll get changed before we leave here.’

  Exactly as he had expected, the Ford pulled into the same parking area about half a minute later. The road was so straight that whatever they did would be obvious to anybody in the following car.

  Bronson and Angela ignored the Ford, walked into the cafe and chose a table by the window, both of them watching the other vehicle. In fact, there was nothing to see; it simply sat there at the far end of the car park, with no movement from the occupants.

  Outside again, Bronson took off his jacket, which he placed on the back seat of the car, then opened the boot, took out the two pairs of overalls and handed the smaller set to Angela.

  ‘Dark green, I notice,’ she said. ‘Is that deliberate, so that we can hide in the woods?’

  Bronson nodded. ‘If they’d had any in camouflage pattern, I’d have bought them instead.’

  They put on the boots as well, and Bronson sorted out some of the other equipment he’d bought so that it was readily to hand. Then they got back in the car and pulled away. Passing close to the Ford would have been a little obvious, so he kept well over to the right as he left the parking area. The sun was glinting off the other car’s windscreen, so all he could see were two vague shapes inside.

  Almost as soon as he rejoined the main road, he followed Angela’s directions and indicated left to turn into Forties Road.

  ‘I’ll take a look at Google Maps and try and find you a good spot to stop. And while I’m doing that, you can tell me what your plan is. Assuming you’ve got one, obviously.’

  ‘Not as such,’ Bronson admitted. ‘It all depends what we find when we get to wherever we’re going. I was thinking that I go to ground somewhere while you walk off the road and deep into the woods, making a lot of noise and talking to me all the time – “Hey, look at this, Chris”, that kind of thing – so that the men in the Ford will think we’re heading into the woods together and will follow. Then I’ll pop up behind them and sort them out.’

  Angela was quiet for a long moment, the silence almost hostile. When she replied, her voice was cold.

  ‘So I’m a stalking horse, am I? Is that really the best you can come up with?’

  Bronson shrugged. ‘I’d love to hear some better ideas,’ he said, ‘but we need a diversion. We need to focus their attention in one direction while I come at them from a different direction. You stamping about in the woods and holding an imaginary conversation with me is the only option I can think of. And that will also keep you out of danger.’

  ‘I just know I’m going to regret this,’ Angela muttered.

  She turned her attention back to her mobile.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Keep going. The best place is called Barrs Corner, which seems to be just the name of an area. There’s a big pond or a small lake marked on the map, and next to it is an opening that goes nowhere except to another small lake. Maybe it’s used by fishermen to park their cars. I don’t know. It’s on the left, and I’ll give you plenty of warning when we’re getting close.’

  ‘Thanks. Look, when we get there, you keep well out of the way, just in case it all goes wrong. And take the car keys as well.’

  About ten minutes later, as they approached a gentle right-hand bend, Angela pointed ahead.

  ‘It’s just around this bend. You can see part of the lake on the right. And that’s the pull-off on the left.’

  Bronson checked the mirrors. The Ford was about a quarter of a mile behind them. He indicated left, crossed the road and drove into a short but fairly wide entrance, the way ahead blocked by trees and undergrowth about fifty yards in.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, stopping the car on one side of the open area and getting out. ‘We need to be quick. They’ll have slowed right down when they saw me indicate, but I guess they’ll be here in a minute or two, and we need to be out of sight by the time they stop.’

  He opened the boot, took out the trenching tool, which he gave to Angela, and took the axe and knife for himself.

  ‘What do I do with this?’ Angela asked.

  ‘If either of them gets past me, hit them over the head with it,’ Bronson suggested.

  Moments later, they’d both disappeared into the trees that surrounded the flat ground where the car was parked.

  Angela made her way along the rough path that followed the western edge of the water, moving noisily but saying nothing because their shadowers had not yet arrived. She’d covered about fifty metres when she glanced behind her. The Ford was just pulling into the entrance, so she immediately moved into the treeline on her right and started talking as if Bronson was walking right beside her.

  Bronson had ducked into the edge of the wood and then turned back towards the road, which he hoped was the direction they wouldn’t expect him to have gone. Most of the trees were pines or firs – he’d never have made a botanist, that was for sure – and he was able to move quickly and quietly on the carpet of pine needles underfoot.

  The human eye is particularly well adapted to detect movement, a hangover from the days when our distant ancestors were prey animals as much as they were predators, and the instant he saw the nose of the Ford turning towards the pull-off, he froze in place beside a tree, watching and waiting.

  * * *

  Ferrara drove the Ford hire car off the road and looked ahead at the vehicle parked there.

  ‘I can’t block them in,’ he said as he stepped out of the car. ‘The opening is too wide for that.’

  ‘Hopefully we won’t have to bother,’ Rossi replied. ‘Judging by all the gear they bought back in Halifax, I reckon they must have already located the Ark in a cave or something. Once they’ve dragged it out, we’ll put it in the back of our car and get it shipped from here direct to Rome. Bronson and Lewis can stay right here. There are foxes and wild cats and even a few bears here in Nova Scotia and their bodies wouldn’t last long. You or I can drive their car back to Halifax and just dump it somewhere there. Nobody will miss them, and that will be a nice tidy ending to the story.’

  Rossi took a pistol from his pocket and worked the action to load the first round.

  Ferrara chuckled and cocked his own pistol.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’

  Chapter 60

  Lemuel Dayan’s prod at Jerusalem had produced positive results, but not exactly what they had been expecting. One of Zeru’s contacts in the Mossad had produced two pieces of important info
rmation.

  First, they were told that Marco Ferrara and Luca Rossi had flown to Nova Scotia and booked rooms in a hotel in Halifax, which wasn’t good news. But far more importantly – the Vatican wasn’t the only organisation that employed informers – photographs of a piece of parchment bearing a Latin text had been found at the Bibliothèque Serpente in Paris and sent to Jerusalem. The text was unencrypted and related directly to the quest. The original Latin text and a translation had been sent to Dayan’s email address, and the three-man team had spent the next couple of hours studying the clues in conjunction with maps of Nova Scotia, trying to work out what they meant.

  ‘The one thing we do know,’ Josef Gellerman said, ‘is that we’re in the right place. Or the right country, anyway, because Ferrara and Rossi are here as well as the English couple. And our reading of the clues is probably similar to theirs.’

  ‘Which means what?’ Aaron Chason asked.

  ‘That the river running south is probably the Gold River, and the place halfway between the coasts is most likely either New Ross or somewhere very near it,’ Dayan replied. ‘What we don’t know about is the well, and the best way to find that is probably to go over there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gellerman agreed, ‘and make sure we find the relic before those two bastards from the Inquisition get their hands on it.’

  Chapter 61

  In the world of firearms, there are two sounds that are quite unmistakable. The first is the noise made by cocking a pump-action shotgun, and the other is the distinctive click-clack sound of the slide of an automatic pistol being pulled back and released. Bronson clearly heard both men preparing their weapons.

  They were speaking Italian, but he understood every word. If he’d needed any justification for what he was intending to do, that was it. He’d also recognised the driver as the man he’d seen in Campagne-sur-Aude, the man with the white Alfa Romeo MiTo.

  He remained exactly where he was for a few seconds, watching the two Italians. As he expected, they separated and began walking along each side of the rough track, following the route he knew Angela had taken a few minutes earlier.

  He calculated distances and angles, and then set off after them, walking quickly but silently on the pine needles that covered the ground between the trees. As he followed them, he began edging towards the left-hand side of the treeline, moving closer to the rough track but always keeping behind the closer of the two men. He daren’t risk being seen in either man’s peripheral vision.

  Ahead, he could see a section of the track that was much narrower due to a large growth of bushes and young trees encroaching on it from the right. That was as good a place as any to make his move.

  As he had expected, the Italian on the right-hand side of the track, who was slightly behind his companion, paused briefly as the other man moved through the gap, separating the two of them. The moment he came to a stop, Bronson stepped out of the trees right behind him. There was going to be no finesse with this, and he knew he only had the one chance.

  Holding the axe by its head rather than the handle, he smashed the tool onto the back of the Italian’s head. Instantly the man tumbled forward, the pistol dropping from his hand, falling to the soft earth with barely a sound.

  Bronson grabbed the weapon and stuck it in the waistband of his trousers, then bent down and picked up the unconscious Italian. The man was quite slim, and Bronson was strong, and he had no difficulty in lifting him bodily over his shoulder.

  As silently as he could, he stepped back among the trees and undergrowth, dumped the Italian behind a thick growth of timber, then returned to the edge of the track, the pistol now in his hand.

  The other armed man had stopped, turning his head from side to side, his pistol raised and ready, obviously looking for his companion.

  Bronson could easily have shot him where he stood, but he wasn’t in the business of killing people unless it was unavoidable, so he just watched and waited, guessing that the man would turn back and search the area behind him, and then he could take him. But as the Italian started to retrace his steps, something entirely unexpected happened.

  Bronson saw a square black object appear above and behind the man’s head, and for the briefest of instants he had no idea what it was. Then realisation dawned as the shovel blade of the trenching tool crashed into the back of the Italian’s head and he fell forward.

  Angela had obviously taken him at his word. And very efficiently, too.

  ‘So what do we do with them?’ she asked, stepping over the now unconscious man and walking over to Bronson.

  ‘Nicely done,’ he said, giving her a brief hug. ‘I expected you to be a lot further down the track.’

  ‘I was, but I started to get worried about you and doubled back. Where’s the other one?’

  ‘In the woods, having a kip.’

  ‘Good. So what’s the plan?’

  ‘I think we call in the thin blue line. That’ll get these two out of our hair for a while.’

  Bronson picked up the pistol the second Italian had dropped and handed it to Angela.

  ‘Watch him for a few minutes while I sort out contestant number one,’ he said.

  * * *

  Both men were still deeply unconscious, and by the time they’d even started to come round, Bronson had dragged them to a couple of trees near their hire car. He’d wrapped their arms around the tree trunks and tied each man’s wrists together using some of the climbing rope he’d purchased earlier. Then he’d taken their car keys, opened the boot and found the spare ammunition for their pistols, plus a Winchester hunting rifle and a box of twenty rounds of 30.06 ammunition, which he’d transferred to the boot of his own hire car on the reasonable grounds that having a weapon that couldn’t be traced to him would probably be quite a good idea.

  While the two men were still unconscious, he’d wiped both the pistols and pressed their right hands around them to make sure their prints were on them, then removed the magazines and jammed the weapons into their waistbands.

  He’d made a call to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the local variant of the thin blue line, using one of the Italians’ phones, to say that he’d seen two men waving pistols around, and given the approximate location. He’d also given the make, model and registration number of their car and left the phone switched on so that its position could be triangulated. Finally he’d used the sheath knife to puncture two of the tyres on the Ford so that even if the Italians did manage to get free, which he doubted, they still wouldn’t be able to drive away.

  As he drove the hire car out of the pull-off, he waved to the two Italians, who were now both fully conscious and clearly seething.

  ‘You didn’t question them,’ Angela said as he started driving back towards New Ross. ‘I wonder who they were working for.’

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have got much sense out of them,’ he replied, ‘but they were both Italian and my guess is that their ultimate employer might be the Vatican, through a few cut-outs, of course. But I doubt they’d ever have admitted that to me. And we know what they were looking for because of what they said to each other when they got out of the car. Their idea was to take the Ark and leave us to rot in the woods.’

  ‘Nice. So is that the last we’ll see of them?’

  ‘I hope so. I’ve done some checking. The Canadians are stricter than the Americans when it comes to firearms. Most hunting rifles, like the one we now have in the boot, don’t even need to be registered, though I should have a permit to own a weapon. But there are strict rules about pistols. I doubt those two men will be released for at least a few days.’

  ‘But they have both got quite nasty wounds on the backs of their heads. Won’t that raise a few questions? Like maybe they’re entirely innocent and have been set up?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but in my experience, the corporate police brain is a fairly simple structure. No matter what the details are, the fact is that the Mounties will find two non-residents of Canada each in possessio
n of an unregistered or stolen pistol. That’s an offence, and that’ll be what appears on the charge sheets. They probably won’t be too bothered about how they got hold of the weapons, or who tied them up, or who made the call to summon the cavalry.’

  ‘So now we can start looking properly,’ Angela said, and once again she took out the folded topographical map and her smartphone.

  Chapter 62

  New Ross, Nova Scotia, Canada

  It felt to Josef Gellerman as if he’d been tramping around and about New Ross for the entire day, though they’d actually been there for only about four hours. They’d started near the church, looking for an old well or any other structure where a band of wandering medieval knights could have hidden the most precious religious relic of all time.

  They’d found nothing within the village – which hadn’t been a surprise – and had then started widening the search area, moving around the outskirts of New Ross in an expanding concentric circle, skirting private property where they had to and walking through woods and fields and along the banks of the Gold River.

  And they’d seen absolutely nothing.

  What they didn’t know was that they had been seen, and not just by the handful of people they’d passed as they walked around the village.

  Trail cameras are usually motion-activated and battery-powered and record images and videos on an SD card, but a new generation of solar-powered cameras is becoming available. These employ a modified 3G or 4G Android smartphone, encased in a waterproof housing, to transmit data to a specific wireless network.

  When the three Israelis had walked through one particular area of rough ground, two of these cameras, each painted in camouflage colours and almost invisible among the trees, had recorded their progress and transmitted short video sequences to the recipient network. That had raised an immediate alarm.