by Will Adams
They emerged onto the empty cathedral floor a few moments later, went over to the crypt stairs. They could hear hammering and drilling below. It wasn’t yet time. They milled around as they waited, looking at the altar, the pillars, upwards at the great cupola.
‘So have you worked it out, then?’ asked Jay.
‘Worked what out?’ asked Luke.
‘What this is all about. What we’re about to find.’
‘No,’ said Luke. ‘What are we about to find?’
Jay gave a reproving cluck of the tongue. ‘Come on, Luke. Haven’t you even noticed the geometry of this place?’
‘Eight sides topped by a Dome,’ said Luke. ‘What about it?
‘Oh.’ He looked downcast for a moment. But then he cheered up. ‘But I bet you don’t know where Wren got the idea from, do you?’
‘You mean the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz?’ said Luke.
‘No!’
‘That Bourbon chapel in Paris, then?’
‘St-Denis?’ exclaimed Jay excitedly. ‘Of course not St-Denis. How can you be so obtuse? Don’t you know what the English believed back then? They believed themselves descended from a lost tribe of Israel. It was almost an article of faith.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Rachel.
‘A lost tribe of Israel,’ said Jay. ‘London was their new Jerusalem, and this spot right here its most sacred site. The high point of the city, the focus of their worship. Did you know that St Paul himself reputedly came here and preached at this very spot? This very spot.’ The drilling and hammering grew so loud that Jay had almost to shout to make himself heard. ‘And what, in Wren’s day, did Jerusalem have on the Temple Mount, on its most sacred site?’
‘The Dome of the Rock?’ hazarded Rachel.
‘Yes!’ cried Jay. ‘The Dome of the Rock! Now do you see?’
Luke went a little numb. ‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome,’ he murmured.
‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome!’ Fervour flushed Jay’s face. ‘Have you ever seen Perugino’s painting of the Virgin? It shows the Temple of Solomon in the background, and it’s exactly like the Dome, eight walls topped by a dome. And Raphael too. The same thing. Eight walls topped by a dome. And yet you somehow think that Wren’s design for this place was a coincidence? That it was just dumb luck that he settled on the exact same formula? No. A thousand times no. He designed it like this precisely because-’
A great cracking and splintering noise came suddenly from below, like hell splitting open. ‘I guess that’s our cue,’ said Walters, herding them towards the steps. They went down together, turned left towards Nelson’s tomb. Even as they arrived, a great slab of floor began to rise, hoisted by a yellow workshop crane, steel cables creaking and groaning with the strain, so that the people nearest took an instinctive half step back. But everything held and the slab of mortar and hardcore inched upwards, bumping and scraping the sides as it came, throwing off a cascade of ancient dust that spread in a thick, low mist and set off a round of throat-clearing coughs.
The slab lifted clear of the floor. It was massive, not just fat but tall, a good foot taller than Luke himself. The operator swung it sideways above a makeshift mattress of blankets and dust sheets laid as a buffer on the mosaic, bumped it down. Everyone edged to the brink of the great black pit in the floor and stared seven or eight feet down to a pair of rotted wooden beams laid parallel across the shaft, then another eight feet or so of open space to a dusty flagstone floor at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into the darkness below Nelson’s tomb.
Jay turned to Luke again, his voice barely a whisper now. ‘London was the new Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘And Wren wanted his cathedral to do the same job as the Temple of Solomon did in the old Jerusalem. The same job that the Dome has been doing ever since.’
It was hard for Luke to concentrate on what Jay was saying, so mesmerized was he by the pit, by all the torches being shone down into it. ‘Protecting the rock?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Jay impatiently. ‘Protecting the Holy of Holies. The place where it used to be, at least. The exact place.’
‘But why?’ asked Luke.
‘Why do you think?’ demanded Jay. ‘My God! What was the Holy of Holies for? What was its purpose? What was it designed to house?’
Jay had Luke’s full attention now. He turned and stared at his old friend in disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.
Jay’s eyes glittered triumphantly. ‘Oh, but I am,’ he said. ‘And you’re about to see it for yourselves.’
II
No one seemed to be in charge. Morgenstern had headphones and a throat mike on, the better to describe what he was seeing to the Vice President and answer her questions. Everyone else was staring raptly down, forgetting that they had work to do. Croke therefore stepped up to the plate. He turned to an NCT man. ‘Get the ladder,’ he said.
The man nodded and fetched it, lowered it into the hole, twisting it sideways to feed it between two beams before setting it on the floor. The chamber was deeper than they’d anticipated; only the top rung protruded above the mouth, making descent somewhat precarious. ‘I’ll go first,’ said the NCT man. ‘I can hold it from the bottom.’
‘No,’ said Croke. ‘I’m going first.’ He sat on the floor, felt for a rung with his foot, turned around and steadied himself before he began his descent. It grew dark more quickly than he’d expected. At the foot, all he could see was a few marble steps leading down into the blackness, and pale walls that glowed like ghosts around him. He was about to call up for a flashlight when he saw Morgenstern already on his way down with two of them, though both were turned off at present, presumably so that the Vice President could share the moment of revelation with them. And now the cameraman joined them at the foot, taking pains not to film their faces.
Morgenstern passed Croke the spare flashlight. ‘Ready?’ he grinned.
‘Ready,’ agreed Croke.
They turned on and raised their flashlights together. Their beams pierced the darkness, their flare making Croke blink. The marble steps fanned out as they led down to a large chamber directly beneath Nelson’s tomb, perhaps eight paces square and twelve feet tall, its walls inlaid with mosaics of a garden paradise, sunlit orchards heavy with fruit, streams cascading into lily-pad lakes while gorgeous birds thronged the cloudless skies. But that wasn’t what grabbed their attention. For there was a second, smaller chamber nested inside the larger. Its walls were of flawless white marble and it was fronted by a pair of tall ebony doors. Croke advanced, mesmerized, down the staircase towards it. He stepped up onto its dais, took hold of the twin golden handles, tried to pull the doors towards him. The hinges had stretched over the centuries, however, so that the doors dragged across the floor, screeching and scoring tiny marks in the marble. He took them one at a time instead, lifting the right-hand door then shuffling backwards before setting it down again. Christ, it was heavy. He still couldn’t see inside, for a white linen curtain was draped across the mouth. Rather than drawing it back straight away, he opened the left-hand door instead. Now he glanced at Morgenstern. Morgenstern nodded. Croke took a deep breath and swept the curtain aside. ‘My god,’ he muttered, when he saw what was inside. And it sounded, even to his own ears, like a prayer.
The walls, floor and ceiling of the inner sanctum gleamed with gold, dazzling as dawn in the sudden torchlight. And on a low marble central plinth, there it stood, the Ark of the Covenant itself, a chest of wood and gold, smaller than Croke had anticipated, smaller than the legends that surrounded it, but beautiful nonetheless, and extraordinarily potent, with its carved panels and the pair of golden cherubs kneeling in adoration on its lid, facing each other with their wings outspread and almost touching.
Something touched Croke’s heart then, a childlike awe he hadn’t expected to feel again. A sense that there was so much more to the universe than he understood; more to destiny and the divine. And he found himself, to his own surprise, cryi
ng out to the Lord and falling to his knees before it; and then Morgenstern and the cameraman did likewise, and the others behind, all falling to their knees and crying out to the Lord.
III
The tension in the Jerusalem basement had grown like closeness before a storm. Avram had hoped that a shared sense of purpose would overcome the manifold differences between Shlomo’s and Danel’s parties, but he’d quickly been disappointed. It had taken all his energy and diplomatic skills to keep them together. And then his architect friend Benyamin had arrived. One look at all the squabbling and sniping and he’d spun on his heel and had almost left before Avram had been able to stop him.
But at last something was happening in London. The black screen came to life, showing a great slab of stone and mortar being winched from a mosaic floor. There was no sound, however, and impatient mutters told Avram that the show wasn’t impressing its audience. The slab was set aside. The camera peered down into the gaping hole. A ladder was fed into the darkness. The feed jerked and jumped as the cameraman made his descent. The lighting became ever more darkly atmospheric. Blacks and greys erupted in flares of golden torchlight. The very roughness of the pictures somehow added to their authenticity and mystique, and the basement fell quieter and quieter.
The cameraman walked down a flight of stone steps. There were gasps as the inner sanctum of white marble and ebony doors came into focus. The doors parted reluctantly. A curtain was swept aside. For the longest moment, total silence fell in the basement, astonishment and awe. But it didn’t last. The place erupted with cries of joy, jubilation, even ecstasy. Enemies a few minutes before now laughed and hugged each other, wept openly on each others shoulders. Some prayed while others danced, their euphoria needing physical release as, at long last, they all came together on this night of Rosh Chodesh Sivan. A single mind. A single heart. A single Israel.
He turned to Benyamin, that diehard cynic and sceptic, put his hand on his arm. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘Are you coming with us?’
Tears were streaming freely down the big man’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m coming with you.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
I
The wave of religious enthusiasm died quickly, leaving Croke feeling almost sheepish. He got back to his feet, brushed his knees, assumed his most purposeful expression, the one that said there was serious work to do. He checked his buttonhole camera then turned to Morgenstern, who was still murmuring a commentary to accompany his cameraman’s footage.
This was no time for asking permission. He placed himself squarely in front of the lens, unplugged the microphone jack. ‘Congratulations, Madam Vice President,’ he said. ‘The Reverend told me you were the new Esther. It seems he was right.’
A moment of silence; he began to fear he’d misjudged this. But finally she spoke. ‘Our task isn’t complete yet, Mr Croke,’ she said, in that distinctive voice.
‘No, Madam Vice President.’
‘You’re delivering it yourself, I understand.’
Croke nodded. ‘We’ll take it to the airport now. We need to get it there by dawn.’
‘I’ll be watching. The whole world will be watching. Praying for your success.’
‘Thank you.’ He hesitated just a moment, then said: ‘Madam Vice President, there’s something I have to ask.’
‘What?’ she asked, her tone suddenly wary.
He dropped his eyes and nodded to himself, wanting to convey that he knew how far over the mark he was stepping. ‘Madam Vice President, I’ve no illusions about the risks ahead. That’s fine. This mission is worth it. But there’s something I can’t reconcile myself to, however hard I try.’ He looked up again into the camera. ‘My father has served our nation all his life. It would kill him to think I’d betrayed it in any way.’
‘You know I can’t publicly acknowledge our involvement.’
‘No, Madam Vice President. Of course not. But he trusts you. He admires you. So if I don’t make it back, I beg you please to find some private way of letting him know that I gave my life for a mission that had your knowledge and blessing. Just a word in his ear from someone he can trust, so that he can hold his head up high when the media goes to work on him.’
Her voice relaxed. Promises were cheap. ‘Of course. I’ll gladly let your father know.’
‘Thank you, Madam Vice President.’
And he meant it. Her voice was far too well-known to be denied, and his buttonhole footage of Morgenstern and his NCT comrades was all the corroboration he’d need. When they tried to make him the fall guy now, as they surely would, they’d find themselves in for a nasty shock.
II
Jay wasn’t among those who’d fallen to their knees. He’d known what they’d find, after all. And he knew the truth of it, too.
After he’d discovered the faint traces of a schematic hidden beneath one of Newton’s religious texts in Jerusalem’s Yahuda archive, he’d come to believe that the great man had somehow discovered the true Ark, had analysed its workings and then restored it. And his uncle Avram had joyfully agreed, for it had long been an article of his faith that the Ark would be found and returned to Jerusalem before the Third Temple could be built. This discovery, therefore, had seemed more than happy providence. It had seemed like the hand of God at work.
Luke’s find yesterday, however, had made him question this assumption. For in his cryptic note, Newton had acknowledged receipt of 12 plain panels and blocks of SW. SW, in such a context, could surely only stand for shittim wood, the material from which the Ark had been fashioned. If this had been the original Ark, the panels would therefore already have been worked, not plain or still in blocks. And so Jay had been forced to a different conclusion: that Ashmole had bequeathed Newton not the true Ark itself, but merely the materials and concept necessary for building a perfect replica.
Jay hadn’t shared this revised theory with anyone. He owed it to his uncle to tell him first, and he hadn’t yet had the chance. And, to be honest, he wasn’t sure he’d tell him anyway. It would only dismay and dispirit him, and what difference did it truly make? To Jay, an Ark by Newton was as wondrous and ordained as one by Moses. Besides, this was what destiny had written, and who were they to argue?
The schematic strongly implied there should be other materials here. Jay couldn’t see them inside the Holy of Holies, so he went around back and there they were: three oak chests, a large one with two shrunken versions of itself in front, like a mother posing with twin daughters.
‘What are they?’ asked Luke, at his shoulder.
‘Let’s find out,’ Jay said.
The boxes’ sides and lids were elaborately fashioned with scenes from Genesis, Exodus and Kings. He opened one of the smaller ones first. It was tightly packed with vestments. The topmost robe was so heavy that it was an effort to hold it up. It was fashioned from purple, violet, white and scarlet cloth embroidered with gold thread and decorated with thin golden plates and bells. But what really caught Jay’s eye were the four rows of precious and semi-precious stones sewn into its bodice. He turned with delight to Luke and Rachel. ‘The ephod,’ he said. ‘The robe of the Kohen, High Priest of the Ark of the Covenant.’ He held it against his chest to show them the stones. ‘Sardius, topaz and carbuncle.’ He moved his finger down a row. ‘Emerald, sapphire and diamond.’ His finger moved to the third row. ‘Ligure, agate and amethyst.’ And finally the fourth. ‘Beryl, onyx and jasper.’
‘The initials from the Newton papers,’ said Rachel.
‘The initials from the Newton papers,’ nodded Jay. ‘The twelve stones that Ashmole left Newton so that he could make himself an ephod. It proved this was for real, not some intellectual exercise. Why else would he have needed them otherwise?’ He shook his head in awe. ‘But he wasn’t a Kohen, Luke. That was the fact of it. He needed a Kohen like me.’
‘Jay Cowan,’ murmured Luke. ‘Jakob Kohen.’
‘It was my great-grandfather,’ said Jay. ‘He thought that Cowan would be a more prudent name
for travelling here from across Europe. But we’re Kohens all the same.’
‘So that robe is yours, is it?’
‘Made for me by Newton himself,’ said Jay. ‘Think about that. All my life, people have told me that I was a freak. Yet now it turns out I was made this way for a reason. Now it turns out that I have a destiny. That’s quite something, don’t you think? To have a destiny?’ He folded the robe back in its chest, turned his attention to its twin. Its interior was divided into two; on the left were sheets of some dull metal; on the right were glass flasks with encrusted stoppers three-quarters full of some clouded liquid. He closed it, turned to their mother. Its lid, however, wouldn’t lift. He frowned and walked around it, looking for a way in. It had sturdy brass handles set into its sides, but they didn’t give when he pulled. And the oak panels fitted so perfectly together that they gave no hint of how they might open. Out of frustration as much as anything, he pushed each of the sides in turn, and finally one of the end panels sank in a little way. He pushed harder and a slot opened in the lid, allowing him to slide the panel up and out. There was a second panel immediately behind it, covered in rich blue cloth and fitted with a pair of leather handles. He pulled them and an interior compartment slid sweetly towards him, like a drawer on oiled castors. He pulled it all the way out, turned it around. It was perhaps two and a half feet long, half the length of the chest. Its sides were covered in the same blue cloth, but its interior was finished with brown and white fur, and it was as obviously shaped to accommodate the Ark as a glove is to fit a hand.
He knelt to look inside the hollowed chest. A mirror twin of brown and white fur was fitted to the far end, so that the two halves together would form a perfect womb for its precious cargo. He reached inside to see if the far end pulled out too, but it appeared to be fixed in place. He looked up at Luke. ‘You can’t carry the Ark openly,’ Jay told him. ‘It’s against Jewish law. If you need to move it, you first have to wrap in tachash and blue cloth.’