Ark of Fire ca-1

by C. M. Palov

  “I need to get out of here.” Pushing him aside, Edie staggered toward the door.

  Going down on bent knee, Caedmon quickly searched through Sanchez’s pockets. The search concluded, he followed Edie out of the abattoir.

  Silently they stared at the wreck of a farm. On the wet breeze Caedmon heard the creak and groan of rotted wood. In the distance, a dilapidated shutter rattled against an equally dilapidated window frame.

  “Now what?”

  “If we are to steer the ship through the dense fog, we must remain calm,” he told her.

  “Couldn’t you have come up with a more uplifting cliché?”

  “Sorry. My brain is a bit mashed.” He showed her the cell phone that he had discovered in Sanchez’s coat pocket.

  “Do you think MacFarlane will give chase?”

  Caedmon thought about it for a moment before finally shaking his head. “He has the Ark. That is all he cares about.”

  CHAPTER 74

  Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel, so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

  Opening the storage compartment in the middle of the SUV’s console, Stanford MacFarlane stowed his well-worn Bible; the words of the prophet Ezekiel never ceased to inspire him.

  Beside him in the driver’s seat, his gunnery sergeant muttered under his breath, complaining yet again about having to drive on the left side of the road. Stan ignored him. They would be in Margate soon enough. A small fishing boat docked at the harbor would enable them to bypass British customs.

  Again, he craned his neck, his eyes alighting on the well-padded shipping crate placed in the Range Rover’s cargo hold.

  The Ark of the Covenant.

  It had taken more than twenty years for him to find that most sacred of relics. His search ordained by God, he had tracked down every lead, every rumor, every crackpot theory regarding the Ark; his search had taken him to the distant corners of the globe. Ethiopia. Iraq. Southern France. One by one, each theory had been discredited, leaving only the quatrains of the medieval knight Galen of Godmersham.

  Again, he glanced at the shipping container, experiencing a tingling sensation. As though his entire body were enveloped in a static electric field.

  The Lord was near at hand! He could feel it!

  For it was at the Ark that God, made manifest, had appeared to Moses. The Ark not only embodied the Almighty, it was the symbol of God’s promise to His chosen people. Nothing had changed. It was now as it had been then. Adorned with the Stones of Fire, he, too, would be able to speak with the Almighty. Just as Moses had conversed with God in the wilderness.

  That heady thought gave rise to a vision in his mind’s eye; Stan could hear the blast of trumpets and the clang of cymbals, the shouts and cheers, a throng of men joyfully singing hosannas. As though thirty-five hundred years had come and gone in the blink of an eye.

  All praise to God the Almighty!

  He knew full well that God’s plan for mankind had been formulated in the Garden of Eden and that it would end with a new paradise where those worthy of God’s blessings would enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity. Finally, the rest well deserved, the warriors would put aside their bloody weapons and lie side by side with the meek and gentle lamb.

  With astounding clarity, the prophet Ezekiel had seen the crimson future that would proceed the golden dawn.

  Stan did not doubt that Ezekiel’s prophecy would soon unfold, taking an unprepared world by storm. The future was already written, prophecy the gift that God gave to quell man’s fear in the face of the dark and violent nights that were to come.

  And when Ezekiel’s prophesized war finally came, sinful man would have no doubt as to God’s existence.

  Those would be dark days. Days that would push human-kind to the limits of their endurance. But those who refused to traffic with the enemy would be reborn in the new world to come. A time of rest for the people of God. When the deserts of the earth would be made fertile and when the Dead Sea would no longer be dead. Ezekiel foretold of how those waters would be stocked with the very fish that would feed the new kingdom of God.

  A thousand years of peace. Time for an old warhorse to at long last take his rest.

  Reaching into his pocket, Stan removed his BlackBerry, quickly typing out a numeric code with his thumbs. Double-checking each digit, he sent the text message, knowing it would simultaneously reach members of Rosemont Security Consultants stationed in Europe and the Middle East. Battle orders issued, he returned the device to his pocket.

  As they approached the Margate town limits, Stan thought of the Englishman and his harlot. Their execution was well deserved, and he felt no pity for them. Instead, a wave of hatred washed over him. Hate was good. Cleansing even. Hate enabled a man to slay the infidel and slaughter the sinner.

  He would put his hate to good use in the days to come.

  CHAPTER 75

  “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m actually sad,” Edie confessed, taking the proffered coffee cup from Caedmon’s outstretched hand. “Angry, but sad. I mean those two guys were a couple of homophobic misanthropes in dire need of some sensitivity training. But watching them die was—” She broke off and stared at the narrow roadway that fronted the public bench.

  Coffee cup in hand, Caedmon seated himself beside her. He, too, gloomily stared at the main thoroughfare that ran through the middle of the small seaside port of Gilchrist.

  Knowing that the local constabulary would be drawn to the plumes of black smoke produced by the Range Rover explosion, and that, in turn, would lead them to at least one dead body, he’d used the pilfered GPS receiver to plot a course in the opposite direction from the charred ruins. Although exhausted, they’d tramped through deserted farmers’ fields, eventually arriving at their present location. Unwelcoming in the way that small clannish enclaves tended to be, Gilchrist had about it the distinct scent of salt and dead fish, the town’s only saving grace being that it had a coach depot. Assuming one could call a metal-covered bench situated only six feet from the roadway a proper depot.

  Raising the paper cup to his lips, Caedmon took a sip of the horrible-tasting brew that he’d purchased at the fish-and-chip shop across the way. According to the reticent fellow behind the counter, the afternoon coach to London was due to arrive in forty minutes.

  “It’s never easy to witness the extinction of a life,” he replied, also haunted by the deaths of Harliss and Sanchez. “Try as one might to erase the memory, it leaves an imprint on your soul.”

  “Not for MacFarlane or his men.” Raising the plastic lid, Edie took several swallows. Only to grimace a few seconds later from the bitter aftertaste. “They wholeheartedly believe that when they pull the trigger, they’re doing God’s work.”

  “Somehow I doubt that MacFarlane’s God would have much truck with those of us who long for peace, not war.”

  Sighing, Edie wrapped her free arm around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in desperate need of a group hug.”

  As am I, love. As am I.

  The web of life was fragile, indeed, and he hoped this day’s atrocities would quickly recede from Edie’s memory. Hoped she could forget what she’d witnessed. And forgive what she’d seen him do. As soon as they reached London, he intended to call in a favor from an old chum at MI5 and have her placed in an out-of-the way safe house. Some place where Stanford MacFarlane and his assassins could never find her.

  Edie inclined her head away from his shoulder. “What do you think MacFarlane plans to do now that he has the Ark?”

  “The first order of business will be to get the relic out of Britain. If he’s discovered with the Ark on English soil, not only will the bloody th
ing will be confiscated, it will be sent directly to the British Museum.” Where it would draw larger crowds than the Rosetta stone, the Elgin Marbles, and the Sutton Hoo treasure combined.

  He removed the nicked GPS receiver from his anorak pocket. “It’ll take a few moments to initialize,” he informed her as he hit the Power button. He held the receiver aloft to get a satellite fix on their position. A few seconds later, glancing at the small display screen, he said with a teasing smile, “Ah, we are exactly where we should be.”

  Edie halfheartedly returned the smile. “Since I have yet to correctly program the TV remote, I’ll have to trust you on that one. But isn’t the GPS receiver a bit superfluous? I mean, we’re here already and we know where ‘here’ is located.”

  “On the contrary. Given that this is a handheld computer with satellite capabilities, untold information could be stored on the device.” Using the NAV key, he accessed a database file of saved maps. “Now, isn’t this interesting. A number of maps were recently downloaded. According to the list, there are maps for Oxford, Oxfordshire, Godmersham, Swanley, and—” He stared at the list, stunned.

  “Come on, Caedmon. I can only hold my bated breath for so long.”

  “And Malta,” he replied, turning the receiver in her direction.

  “Malta?” Tapping her pursed lips, she stared at the display screen. “Although world geography isn’t one of my strong suits, I seem to recall that Malta is a spit of an island located in the Mediterranean Sea. Do you think that’s where MacFarlane is headed?”

  “Given that the list of maps perfectly corresponds to MacFarlane’s known movements in the last seventy-two hours, we must assume that Malta is his intended destination.” And how very ironic, given that the diminutive isle had once been home to the Knights of St. John, the same order of warrior monks to which Galen of Godmersham had been an initiated member.

  “Isn’t Malta where St. Paul was shipwrecked while en route to Rome?”

  “Hmm? Er, yes,” he answered, interrupted from his reveries. “As a crossroads between Africa and Europe, the island has hosted many a famed and infamous personage during its turbulent history.”

  “But why would MacFarlane take the Ark to Malta?”

  Caedmon shrugged, admittedly at a loss. “The dreams of a madman are difficult to decipher.”

  “I’m guessing that getting the Ark out of England is going to be an even more difficult feat, what with airport security having tightened considerably in recent years.”

  “Which is why Stanford MacFarlane will no doubt transport the Ark via a shipping vessel. An innocuous boat leaving port in the dead of night sounds about right.” As he spoke, the mobile phone in his pocket began to shrilly beep.

  “What’s that?”

  Caedmon shoved his hand into his anorak pocket and removed the mobile he’d taken from Sanchez. He glanced at the digital display.

  “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, we’ve just been given Stanford MacFarlane’s next chess move,” he said, showing her the flash message.

  104-13-94-38-35-17-89-62-122-57-19-97-33-26-42-109-86- 70-40-9-53-2-119

  “Well, will ya look at that? It’s some sort of a text message sent by an unnamed person at Rosemont Security Consultants. Although I don’t know that I would call it a text message per se, since it appears to be nothing more than a numeric list.”

  “A coded numeric list, I daresay.” Caedmon suspected that Stanford MacFarlane maintained contact with his troops with flash messages sent via mobile phones. A brilliant means of communication in the satellite age, enabling MacFarlane to simultaneously issue battle orders to followers across the globe.

  “If only we had the encryption code,” he murmured.

  “Do you think the encryption has anything to do with the map of Malta that we found on the GPS receiver?”

  “Mmmm . . . difficult to say.” His gaze ricocheted between the receiver and the mobile. “Probably not, given that Harliss was the only one of MacFarlane’s men to carry a satellite receiver. I suspect that MacFarlane moves his chess pieces very carefully across the board, revealing the master plan in dribs and drabs.”

  “Where do we begin the hunt?”

  “In Malta. However, from this point forward, there is no more ‘we.’”

  When Edie heard that, her brown eyes furiously gleamed. “So, in other words, you’re planning to dump me and chase after MacFarlane on your own.”

  “Rather than ‘chase after MacFarlane,’ I intend to retrieve the Ark.” Getting up from the bench, he walked over to the nearby trash receptacle and tossed his coffee cup into the plastic-lined can.

  He had no delusions as to the difficulty of the task he’d set for himself. Tracking down MacFarlane and actually confiscating the Ark of the Covenant would more than likely prove an impossible, if not deadly, undertaking. But try he must. The GPS receiver had proved a godsend. Now, at least, he knew where to hunt for his nemesis.

  Grabbing him by the wrist, Edie urged him to retake his seat on the bench. “I know you’re worried about me. That said, going after the Ark isn’t a one-man job. You’re going to need all the help you can get to vanquish MacFarlane and his Warriors of—”

  “I can’t take you with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t have time to potty-train you.”

  “Why, you arrogant bastard!” She leaped to her feet. “I’m not some Bond girl along for the ride. I’m your partner. And in case you didn’t get the memo, I am a full and equal partner.”

  Caedmon stared at her, unable to take his eyes off the long corkscrew curls that blew about her flushed face. Also unable to quash the memory of her standing beneath an upraised pickax.

  “‘In the world you will have tribulation,’” she continued. “John sixteen. A Bible verse that Stanford MacFarlane, no doubt, holds near and dear.”

  “And a frightening prospect it is.”

  “Yes, it is frightening. Which is why I’m going with you to Malta. Unlike you, I completely understand MacFarlane and his radical beliefs. For five years, I was fed a steady diet of Ezekiel and the End Times prophecy.”

  “After today’s primer in apocalyptic belief, I should be able to manage.”

  “What you heard was just the tip of the iceberg. Think of me as your very own expert in Christian fundamentalism. Besides, we’re a team. We have been from the very beginning. So, short of knocking me unconscious, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “Very well,” he murmured.

  If she wondered at his ready acquiescence, she gave no indication. “Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, what’s the game plan?”

  “Simply put, to grab MacFarlane by the Old Testament and squeeze very, very hard.”

  CHAPTER 76

  Caedmon took a deep breath of the invigorating sea air. Bracing his hands on the deck railing, he stared at the rolling blue Mediterranean waves that danced in the lemony light of early morn. It was the same sea that Odysseus once sailed en route to battle the Trojans.

  Standing beside him, her cheeks tinted red from the breeze, Edie also deeply inhaled. “Other than a Potomac River dinner cruise, this is the first time I’ve ever been on a big boat. I think I like being on the open sea.” A mischievous smile playing about her lips, she winked at him. “Could be because I was a lady pirate in a past life; what do you think?”

  “I think I’d rather be in an airplane roaring high above the sea,” he grumbled. “Too many of these blasted ferry boats have sunk in recent years. Not to mention that traveling by ferry is a damn slow way to get from point A to point B.” Point A being Naples and point B their final destination: Malta.

  “Yeah, but given that it’s the dead of winter, flights into Malta are few and far between. This will actually get us to our destination six hours sooner than if we’d waited for the next available flight. Which you would know if you’d ever watched The Amazing Race. So stop griping.”

  “I have been doing quite a bit of that, haven�
�t I?”

  “Understandable. You’re under a lot of stress.”

  Truly an understatement. Already, the old paranoia had set in. The niggling fear that an unseen enemy would lurch from the shadows. Danger and treachery but a heartbeat away. If allowed to run rampant, fear could quickly become a man’s worst enemy. More dangerous than the brute with a gun.

  Because of his intelligence training, he knew the drill—always use cash, refrain from using one’s real name, and never, ever sleep in the same bed two nights in a row. Simple enough if not for having Edie in tow. With her Pre-Raphaelite beauty, she garnered attention wherever she went.

  Short of knocking me unconscious, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

  An ultimatum. One he didn’t much care to ponder.

  “You’ve got two very big creases in the middle of your brow. Care to share your worries?”

  “I was thinking about the Ark and the poor blokes at Bethshemesh,” he lied, not about to confess his true thoughts.

  “And you’re concerned that when we commandeer the Ark from MacFarlane, it may gobble us whole.”

  “Mock me if you will, but the Ark was once used as a supercharged weapon of mass destruction,” he informed her, still hoping she would have a change of heart and return to the mainland.

  “Eons ago. Which means there’s nobody around who knows how to activate the ancient electromagnetic technology that once powered the Ark. To operate a piece of machinery, you need an instruction manual. And that manual, whether it was written down or passed verbally from father to son, has long since vanished. In other words, the Ark has lost its oom-pa-pa. So no need to worry about it exploding in our faces or anything like that.”

  “That’s not the danger I fear. As a tool of propaganda, the Ark could be used to convince millions of God-fearing people that the so-called End Times are truly upon us.”

  Her eyes focused on the sprightly waves in the distance, Edie plaintively sighed. “Yeah, that has me worried, as well,” she conceded. “Though God may not be fooled by MacFarlane’s false piety, a whole lot of good, well-intentioned people will eat up his prophetic ramblings. But enough said on that topic, huh?”