Ark of Fire ca-1

by C. M. Palov

  For the first time in twenty-five years, Stan worried that he might not be able to fulfill his obligations to God. With the Ark in his possession, he could change the destiny of the world according to God’s holy plan. But first he had to find it.

  I have to find the Ark.

  Those six words reverberated in his head, like an emergency broadcast message playing on a continuous loop.

  He pushed himself off the pew. A soldier of God would not, and could not, surrender.

  As he stepped toward his men, he kicked aside several pieces of broken marble, the centuries-old bas-relief detailing the life of St. Lawrence destroyed in the excavation. The thick Saxon wall had not given up without a fight; nearly an hour of labor had been required to expose the glaringly empty stone cleft.

  Stan straightened his shoulders, ready to fight the next battle. His rest would come when the mission was completed.

  “Looks like we’ve hit another dead end, huh?”

  Stan turned his attention to the Harvard scholar. Stoop-shouldered and shivering, he stood next to the pile of excavated stone.

  “Yes, my thoughts exactly.”

  Suddenly intuiting that all was not right in the world, the scholar’s gaze furtively moved from man to man. If it had not occurred to him before, it did now. He was outnumbered three to one.

  “Hey, fellas! Why so grim? The clues are there, embedded in the quatrains. We just need to go back to the drawing board.” When he received no reply, the scholar held his arms out, motioning to each of them in turn. “All for one and one for all, right?” When that received no reply, he tried a different tack. “I say we talk this over. All those in favor of peace talks, raise your hand.”

  Stan wordlessly stared at the scholar. The sniveling malefactor wanted to engage in pointless conversation in the hopes that they would shake hands, forgive their differences, and begin again.

  “There is nothing more to be said.”

  Intuiting that the death sentence had just been issued, the scholar turned on his heel. Like a church mouse scurrying in the shadows, he ran toward the vestibule. Toward the oversized exit doors.

  “You li’l fuckwad!” Dropping the pickax, Boyd Braxton reached for the .357 Desert Eagle secured in the holster under his arm.

  Stan slapped a hand over the gunny’s raised forearm, physically barring him from shooting the fleeing scholar.

  “Not in the house of God,” he sternly ordered.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Both of his men, their weapons drawn, raced from the church in pursuit of the scholar, who had betrayed them.

  In no particular hurry, knowing the prey would soon be quarried, Stan headed for the double doors at the back of the church. Tomorrow morning the denizens of the small hamlet of Godmersham would wonder at the jumbled pile of marble and stone. Teenage vandals would be blamed. No doubt an endless slew of bake sales would be held to pay for the damage.

  Stuffing his Maglite under his arm, he reached into his pants pocket and removed a gold money clip. He quickly unpeeled three Franklins and shoved them into the wooden slit of the collection box.

  Amends made, he stepped outside, pleased to note that the rain had finally tapered to a manageable drizzle. In the adjacent cemetery, he saw a bobbing pinpoint of red light. The laser beam from the gunny’s pistol. He headed in that direction.

  Trapped en route to the Range Rover, the scholar now stood before Galen of Godmersham’s exhumed grave, his arms raised in a show of surrender.

  “‘God swiftly traps the wicked,’” Stan murmured.

  Boyd Braxton placed the barrel of his Desert Eagle against the other man’s temple. “I think we’re gonna have to rename him Mister Twinkletoes.”

  “Do you guys have any idea the sentence for murder?” the scholar wheezed, his arms unsteadily wavering in midair. Like bedsheets flapping in the breeze.

  “I answer only to God’s law,” Stan replied. Then, giving the scholar an opportunity to atone for his depraved existence, “‘Except ye repent, ye shall die in your sins.’”

  “Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong! You’re the guys sneaking around, breaking into churches, carrying guns. I’m just a debt-ridden grad student trying to make an honest—”

  “Man up! For you are soon to meet your Maker.”

  “Christ! Don’t do this! I’m begging you to—” The soliloquy was cut short by a mewling whimper.

  “Whew! Somebody needs a Depends,” Boyd Braxton muttered, the scholar having lost control of his bowels.

  Disgusted, Stan nodded at the former gunnery sergeant. “Kill him. He is an abomination unto the Lord.”

  A single shot reverberated in the night.

  Like the tolling of a church bell.

  “Now that’s convenient,” the gunny remarked, gesturing with his gun barrel to the nearly headless body crumpled in the bottom of the exhumed grave. Stuffing the powerful pistol into his holster, he bent at the waist and retrieved a shovel. “All in a day’s work, huh, sir?’

  “God derives no pleasure from the death of the wicked. Neither should you.”

  His faith renewed, Stan knew that Eid al-Adha was four days away and counting. Time enough to find the Ark.

  Like the good Marine that he was, he had a contingency plan.

  “Has Sanchez checked in yet?” Sanchez was the man tasked with surveillance.

  “About three hours ago, sir. Aisquith and the woman are holed up in an Oxford hotel room. Sanchez snagged the room next to theirs. Since there’s an adjoining door between the two rooms, he’s keeping an eye on the pair with a peephole video camera.”

  “I want hourly status reports. If the Brit so much as sneezes into a snot rag, I want to know about it.”

  CHAPTER 48

  “Leave the light on.”

  His request, not hers.

  Believing the sex act a give-and-take exchange, Edie had wordlessly complied.

  The golden glow from the bedside lamp illuminating their every move, they had undressed one another, fingers and hands slightly trembling. Both of them succumbing to an awestruck hesitancy. A bashful sort of voyeurism as more and more flesh was revealed. Torso. Breast. Pelvis. Thigh. Until they finally faced one another, completely, and disarmingly, naked. In that moment, she became acutely aware of her own body. Her breasts brushing against her inner arm. Her puckered nipples. The slight quiver in her knees. It’d been three years since her last lover. She wondered if she measured up.

  “You are lovely.”

  Pleased with the compliment, Edie stepped forward, coming within arm’s reach of Caedmon. Needing to make contact, she ran her hands over his chest, surprised to discover that he had the lean, tight build of a younger man.

  Moving closer, she pressed her mouth against the pulse at the base of his throat, able to feel the blood course through him with each rapid beat of his heart.

  He was nervous.

  For some strange reason, that excited her.

  Bending her head, she lathed his nipple with her tongue. Teetering slightly, Caedmon moaned her name, the cultured accent nowhere in evidence.

  Taking the lead, she slowly backed him to the mussed and divided bed. When the backs of his knees hit a twin mattress, she shoved him to a seated position. She then straddled his hips.

  Caedmon’s hands glided along the tops of her thighs, up the sides of her rib cage, before finally stopping at her breasts. A nipple popped between the V of his fingers. It was a lurid, but strangely beautiful sight. She was glad they’d left the light on.

  Intuiting what she wanted, his hands slid to her waist. His eyes having turned an iridescent shade of blue, he helped her find the right angle.

  “Ready?”

  “Set, go,” she replied.

  A second later, with her hands stabilized on his chest, she started to move. Gripping her thighs, Caedmon groaned, the guttural sound competing with the strident piano chords in the background.

  Edie clenched her muscles. Then released. The movement merited anothe
r groan. Caedmon’s grip tightened. Go faster.

  She came. Quickly. Powerfully. Caedmon held her gaze, silently pleading with her to keep moving. Reaching behind her, she touched him. Then watched as he shuddered, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

  The crisis past, Edie fell forward, crash-landing against his torso. Tears in her eyes, she struggled to catch her breath. With her damp cheek nestled against his equally damp one, she softly laughed.

  “I don’t know about you, but I now have a whole new appreciation for classical music.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Caedmon raised a hand to his mouth, stifling a yawn.

  “Sorry. I’m a bit knackered. Last night was—” He laughed softly. “No need to tell you. You were there.”

  Walking alongside him as they made their way down High, Edie nudged him in the ribs. “Was I ever.”

  With their paltry belongings stuffed into the Virgin Airways shoulder bag, they checked out of the hotel immediately after breakfast. The plan was to take a coach to Heathrow, and from there to hire a vehicle for the drive to Godmersham; they were presently en route to Gloucester Green. The hotel clerk had informed them that the airport coaches left Gloucester Green every twenty minutes. Caedmon and Edie agreed that St. Lawrence the Martyr Church might well prove a false lead.

  He glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes past seven. It explained why High Street was nearly deserted. Smiling, Edie pressed closer. Returning the smile, he silently acknowledged that desire was born in the one who desires. Like most men in the initial throes of lust, he wondered if he fancied Edie a bit too much, his thoughts frequently settling upon her.

  The events of the previous evening had unraveled so quickly, he could only cull them to mind in flashes. The quiet hum of rain pounding against the window pane. The not-so-quiet hum of guttural moans and lusty sighs. Round one had ended in an exhausted tangle. Round two had been more subtle, more seductive. They’d eaten mandarin oranges in bed, Edie squirting the juice onto his lower abdomen then lapping it up with her tongue, a mass of curly hair falling to either side of his hips. Unable to control himself, he’d grabbed her head and pushed her lower.

  The pleasure that ensued had been near unbearable.

  “You’re smiling. Broadly, I might add. Just what the heck are you thinking about?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced at his companion, imagining breasts like smooth melons, legs falling open to expose an overripe fig. “I am contemplating the most erotic fruit bowl imaginable,” he replied.

  Edie laughed; the woman was no prude. “I hear tell you guys have one of those thoughts every ten seconds. Amazing that you ever get anything accomplished.”

  “A penciled list greatly helps.”

  She laughed all the harder.

  As he’d already discovered, understanding Edie Miller was one thing, sorting her out another thing altogether. Her early life had been one of abuse and betrayal. And unfathomable pain. Yet somehow she persevered.

  Simply put, he was awed by her strength.

  “What if we actually find the Ark of the Covenant hidden at St. Lawrence the Martyr Church?” Edie inquired out of the proverbial blue. “Have you given any thought as to what we would do with it?”

  In truth, he’d given it scant consideration, focusing, instead, on deciphering the quatrains.

  “I mean, do we hand it over to a museum? Or do we give it to a church or synagogue?”

  “Perhaps we should wait until we find the Ark before consigning it to a second party,” he evasively answered.

  “Or maybe you intend to keep the Ark for yourself,” she pressed, refusing to let the matter drop. “Fodder for your next book.”

  “Bloody hell! I must have talked in my sleep.”

  “I’m serious, Caedmon. So far, you’ve refused to give me a satisfactory answer as to why we’re on this insane quest.”

  “I believe you’ve just hammered the nail square on the head. It is a quest, is it not? Like a knight of old, I seek knowledge and enlightenment.”

  “Oh, puh-leeze.” Her voice fairly dripped with derision. “Henceforth, Sir Gawain, I would appreciate it if you gave me a straight answer rather than a canned sound bite.”

  Caedmon inwardly cringed at the comparison. In later Grail legends, Sir Gawain, possessed of a singular arrogance, failed to grasp the holy import of the quest. He suspected that Edie had purposely plucked the name from the Round Table cast.

  “All I’m saying is that we need to give this a little forethought before rushing off like a pair of fools into the great unknown. And what about MacFarlane and his holy warriors?” She stared at him, clearly apprehensive. “What happens if we run into them while wandering around in Godmersham?”

  Although most fringe groups were all mouth and no trousers, he knew MacFarlane’s group to be the exception to the rule.

  “Rather than succumbing to fearful scenarios, let’s concentrate on finding the blasted Ark.”

  A pronounced silence ensued. Uncomfortable, he feigned an interest in the passing shop windows.

  “We can always go to the police,” Edie suggested, the first to break the unnerving quietude.

  “And promptly be accused of two murders we didn’t commit.” He forcefully shook his head. “We can’t go to the authorities unless the situation absolutely warrants it.”

  “And who gets to make that call, you or me?”

  “We’re a team, are we not?” As he spoke, he slung an arm around her shoulders, marrying trunks, hips, and thighs, one to the other. “‘She winters and keeps warm her note,’” he murmured into her ear, reciting the lyric from an old English song.

  Edie wrapped an arm around his waist. Turning her face upward, she smiled. “Yeah, I’m with you. I much prefer to make love than war.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Oh, man, he wanted to fuck her.

  So bad his johnson had been standing on end for the last couple of hours. Ever since, with his peephole video camera shoved against the hotel room door, he’d had a front-row seat on what turned out to be an unbelievable fuck fest.

  At first he’d been pissed that he’d been given the graveyard surveillance shift. Small wonder Sanchez had been grinning when he relieved him of duty. Who the hell would have thought the curly-haired bitch had the moves of an experienced whore? It’d been all he could do not to hump himself against the adjoining hotel door like a Pakistani raghead in an Islamabad alleyway.

  The colonel was fond of saying, “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The Bible verse helped keep his lusts in check. Usually.

  Placing a hand over his crotch, Boyd Braxton rearranged his equipment.

  A shopkeeper hauling a bucket of flowers behind a plate glass window glared at him. He glared right back and continued on his merry way, Aisquith and the woman one block ahead of him. The streets were practically empty of pedestrian traffic, so shadowing them was a piece of cake. Besides, the redheaded Brit was too intent on whispering sweet nothings into the bitch’s ear to even realize he had a tail on his six.

  On account of the audio surveillance, he knew they were headed to the local bus depot. His job was to head them off at the pass, grateful for the chance to redeem himself after the goat-fuck four days ago in D.C.

  He adjusted his stride, quickening the pace.

  As he did, his heart excitedly pounded against his breastbone.

  He couldn’t wait for the takedown. Knowing it would happen in ten, nine, eight . . .

  CHAPTER 51

  Craning her neck to examine a storefront window display, Edie caught a sudden flash of movement reflected in the plate glass.

  She turned her head. First stunned, then shocked.

  It was Dr. Padgham’s killer. No more than twenty feet behind them.

  Without thinking, she pivoted on her booted heel, placed both hands on Caedmon’s shoulder and shoved him as hard as possible. Right off the curb and into High Street.

  “Caedmon,
run!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, realizing too late that she’d pushed him directly in front of an oncoming vehicle.

  Car horns blared. Tires screeched.

  Deciding that Caedmon would be safer in the roadway than in the killer’s line of fire, she took off running, sparing a quick glance over her shoulder.

  As hoped for, the killer, forced to choose between the two of them, decided to pursue her rather than Caedmon.

  Up ahead, Edie caught sight of an aproned man pushing a wheeled handcart loaded with cardboard boxes. A second later, he disappeared into a building that fronted High Street. Without thinking, she followed the delivery guy, surprised to discover that the entry led to an indoor shopping arcade, its narrow corridors snaking out in several directions. As if he’d vanished into a big, black hole, the delivery guy was nowhere in sight.

  Not so Padgham’s killer; the behemoth had followed her into the shopping arcade.

  Edie willed her legs to move that much faster as she veered down a deserted corridor. All of the shops were closed, their darkened windows decked out in Christmas greenery. Pet supplies. Home accessories. Jewelry. Leather goods. It all passed in a blurry flash.

  Hearing a heavy footfall directly behind her, Edie, frantic, grabbed a carousel of Christmas cards that had been wedged into the doorway of a closed gift shop. With a yank, she hurled it to the ground, spilling the cards willy-nilly onto the floor. Roadblock erected, she kept on running.

  A second later, she heard a muttered curse. Then a crash. Evidently, her assailant had slipped on a greeting card.

  Good. She hoped the bastard broke his neck.

  Catching sight of what looked to be plucked and trussed birds hanging from a wall, she ran in that direction, making a sharp left when she reached the poultry shop. The course adjustment took her down a different corridor, this one well lit. Several shops—a greengrocer, a coffee emporium, and a butcher—were actually open for early-morning business, although paying customers were few and far between. And the ones that were afoot gave no notice to the harried woman running past.