by Will Adams
The third and final volley struck. The east lit up like sunrise, engulfing a man in its flames like some primeval sacrifice. The shockwave buffeted Avram and he stumbled and went down. Heat scorched his cheek, but with only rock to feast on, the flames died quickly. Danel set charges and blew open the Dome’s northern door. They hurried inside. A few old men were cowering in the shadows, but it was the work of a moment to round them up and send them on their way.
Everyone knew their role. Shlomo and his men took the doors and windows, securing them and establishing lines of fire over the whole Mount. Danel and the others collected the packs and made a mound of them beneath the Dome. For his part, Avram took a bullhorn to the door. He was about to speak when a group of young Arab men armed with pickaxe handles and the like yelled out and charged. Avram watched in satisfaction as Shlomo and his comrades scythed them down. They writhed on the ground, weeping and wailing, before dragging themselves back into cover, their crippling agony certain to give other potential heroes pause for thought.
He turned the bullhorn to maximum, spoke in Arabic and English. The Dome, he vowed, would be surrendered intact once their demands were met in full. But it would be destroyed instantly at any attempts to retake it. He repeated the message until satisfied it had got through. He set a satellite modem on a ledge, acquired a signal, tuned three laptops to the news, and arranged them so that everyone could watch or at least listen. He photographed the explosives being strapped to the Dome’s pillars, then copied the images onto his own laptop. He checked Croke’s current location on a flight-tracker website. He wouldn’t be landing for a while yet, so he opened the Word document he’d written earlier, the one with the demands for the prisoner releases and for the military escort for Croke and his cargo. He cut the second demand and pasted it into a new Word document for sending out later. He made a few final tweaks to the prisoner list, composed an email to all the recipients in his address book, then attached the photographs and the prisoner list and sent it on its way.
He allowed himself a private smile. That should keep them on their toes.
FORTY-FOUR
I
‘So you’re on a mission from God,’ mocked Luke. ‘What are you? A Blues Brother?’
Croke felt himself flushing. Perhaps foolishly, he’d expected his revelation to evoke awe rather than ridicule. ‘Aren’t you curious?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious?’
‘About what?’
‘About everything. About us finding the Ark today, for example. Today of all days.’
Luke frowned. ‘What’s so special about today?’
Croke squinted at him. ‘You don’t know? I thought you were a Newton scholar.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John. Haven’t you read it?’
‘Not for a while. It’s more Jay’s area than mine.’
Croke nodded. ‘We spent an afternoon together at the start of all this. I found his interpretation of the prophecies amusing at first. But the more he showed me, the less sceptical I became.’
‘You should check out the moon landings,’ said Luke. ‘They never really happened, you know.’
Croke turned to Rachel. ‘Were you aware that Newton predicted the date of Armageddon? That he predicted the time of the Second Coming and the end of the world as we know it? I wasn’t. I never even knew he was interested in such things. But he was. And he was very specific about them too. He stated that all of this would come to pass once the Whore of Babylon had held earthly power for a specific number of years. The Whore of Babylon, to Newton, was the Catholic Church. The Church acquired earthly power when Pepin first gave them lands to administer. And how many years were to pass from that moment until the Second Coming? I’m glad you ask. The answer doesn’t appear just once in the Books of Daniel and Revelation. It appears five times. Twelve hundred and sixty years. And when is 1260 years since the Second Donation of Pepin? What date does Newton predict for Armageddon and the end of everything we know? Yes, you’ve guessed it. This year.’
‘Is that really the best you’ve got?’ asked Rachel. ‘A prophecy from the Book of Revelation?’
‘Look around you,’ said Croke. ‘Earthquakes, wars, famines, pestilence, hurricanes, turmoil in the Catholic Church. All exactly as predicted for the Last Days. And then there’s the big one. Another prophecy of Daniel as interpreted by Newton, but even more specific this time: Armageddon is to take place seven weeks after the return of the Jews. Seven weeks is forty-nine days. A day in prophecy equates to a year in the real world. And do you know what was happening in Israel forty-nine years ago today? Forty-nine years ago today was the exact moment the Jews regained control of Jerusalem for the first time in two thousand years. Forty-nine years ago today. And when do we find the Ark? Today, of all days. And you still think it’s coincidence?’
‘Yes,’ said Luke.
Croke smiled and forced himself to relax. ‘It’s not just Judaism and Christianity that believe in the Messiah, Armageddon and the End of Days,’ he said. ‘They all appear in Islam too. Did you know that? All these great religions with a shared vision of a final battle between good and evil, the coming of a saviour. Do you know what the main difference is? The main difference is which faiths the various armies profess.’
‘People are tribal. What’s your point?’
‘You wouldn’t believe how many different scenarios have been predicted. Hundreds of them, all based on slightly different readings of the Tanakh, the Bible and the Quran. But there’s one tradition in particular that caught my fancy: that the Ark will be discovered and brought to Jerusalem by the Antichrist himself, enabling the Third Temple to be built. And then this Antichrist will be crowned king in the rebuilt Holy of Holies, and he’ll rule the earth for seven years.’ He leaned a little closer to them both. ‘That would be quite something, don’t you think? To be crowned king in the Holy of Holies? To rule the earth for seven years? Especially as one man’s Antichrist is really only another man’s Messiah, except with worse P.R. Though he does have the better titles, to be fair. The Man of Sin. The Son of Perdition. The Dragon. They have a certain ring to them, don’t they? You know what my favourite is? My favourite is the Prince of Rome. That has some real swagger to it, wouldn’t you agree? The Prince of Rome.’
‘And you take this stuff seriously, do you?’ asked Luke.
‘Don’t you ever get tired of your own scepticism?’ sighed Croke. ‘Doesn’t there come a point when the signs so mount up that belief becomes the rational option? Don’t you ever look up at the sky and get overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all? I do. I’ll be thinking about orbits or gravity or electromagnetism or one of the myriad other things that have to be exactly as they are for us even to exist, and I’ll get dizzy.’
‘You should take a pill.’
‘So you’re immune to it, are you?’
‘People have been predicting Armageddon for two thousand years. Yet somehow we’re still here.’
‘You’re a scientist,’ suggested Croke.
‘I’m a believer in the scientific method,’ replied Luke.
‘Me too,’ said Croke. ‘Me too. I was raised that way. My father really is a scientist, you see. Not some wannabe hanger-on like you. A physicist, to be precise. He taught at MIT for a while, which you don’t get to do unless you’re very, very good, as I’m sure you appreciate. But then the US Air Force came calling, and he was too much the patriot to say no. He’s been with them ever since, developing surveillance, intelligence and weapons’ systems, that kind of thing. That’s how I got started in my line of work, if you’re curious. All those men with wings and stars on their uniforms who came visiting while I was a kid. I couldn’t have asked for a better contacts list.’
‘Your father must be very proud of you,’ Luke said.
Croke laughed. ‘He is, as it happens. But that’s not what’s under discussion right now.
I’m trying to explain why I don’t share your certainty, though I largely share your outlook. And I’m also trying to answer your earlier question, about why I’m on this flight.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘There’s a town called Rome in upstate New York. Maybe you’ve heard of it?’
‘What if I have?’
‘The USAF has an important research base there. That’s where my father went when he left MIT fifty years ago. It’s where he’s spent his whole career. He’s actually run the place for the past three decades. He’s been running it so long, do you know what they call him?’
‘What?’
‘They call him the King,’ said Croke. ‘The King of Rome.’ And he laughed at the shock on Luke and Rachel’s faces, and he pushed himself to his feet and sauntered back to his office.
II
Benyamin had fallen behind the others on the race to the Dome. He was older than everyone but Avram, and far less fit. The intoxication of seeing the Ark had worn off too, leaving him wondering what the hell he’d let himself in for. He arrived inside as Danel pulled the fuses of two construction flares that he’d set up on the carpet beneath the cupola, banishing the great darkness with their fluttering orange light, lighting up the gigantic space above them. Benyamin had seen countless pictures over the years, of course. He’d seen videos. But it was an Arab achievement and so he’d always dismissed it as nothing, as swimming pool architecture. But standing here, staring upwards, it was impossible to dismiss. Impossible to feel anything other than awe. He’d had no idea at all it would look like this, that anything could look like this. He felt giddy. He remembered why he’d wanted to become an architect in the first place.
A pair of doves had found their way inside — always a hazard with such vast spaces. Startled from their roost by the sudden noise and light, they flapped around the cupola, seeking escape from this most gilded of cages. One of them shat in fear even as Benyamin watched, spattering the Foundation Stone itself. His heart went out to it, to them both; and just for a blink he saw his daughters in their last moments, trapped in the rear of that Haifa bus while his wife did her best to comfort them and shield them with her body, and the gunmen outside discharged their magazines, then coolly clipped new ones in.
The terror they must have felt.
‘Snap out of it,’ said Danel. ‘I need you.’
Benyamin’s legs weren’t working properly. Too much lactic acid from all the running he’d done. He had to look down at his feet as he followed him to a pillar, half concealed by steel scaffolding pipes, on which explosive charges had already been placed. ‘Well?’ asked Danel. ‘Will they bring it down?’
A single glance was all it took. The scaffolding was clearly there to facilitate repairs, not to buttress the Dome. ‘They’ll bring it down,’ Benyamin said. And that was that, his entire purpose for being here.
He stood by a pillar, wanting to be inconspicuous, watching as they went to work on the Foundation Stone. First, they covered the exposed rock itself with a double layer of blue silk. Then they unrolled two neoprene air mattresses side by side, zipped them together into a single large mat. They carried this mat over to the Foundation Stone and set it carefully down on it, then tied it to the surrounding pillars with a series of ropes.
The neoprene mattress had numerous internal compartments, each with its own intake valve. Danel and his team now fetched canisters of industrial foam, fitted nozzles to these valves, and pumped the compartments full. The foam expanded inside the neoprene before setting into a hard honeycomb shell capable of absorbing the impact of falling rubble, thus protecting the Foundation Stone from the coming demolition. There was still a risk that something sharp might stab its way through, however, so they stripped off their bullet proof vests and fitted them together with Velcro straps to make a Kevlar blanket that they laid across the neoprene carapace.
The Foundation Stone was now as safe as they could feasibly make it. They were ready to bring down the Dome.
FORTY-FIVE
I
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ said Rachel. ‘He thinks he’s the Prince of Rome. He thinks he’s the fucking Antichrist.’
‘He’s crazy,’ agreed Luke. ‘He’s completely crazy.’
Rachel pulled an anguished face. ‘But what if there’s something to it? I mean, he’s got a point, hasn’t he? The Ark, the Newton prophecies, all the wars and earthquakes, the disease and famine. How many coincidences can there be before they stop being coincidences?’
‘There are always wars and earthquakes. Always disease and famine. And when are the Catholics not in turmoil? And forget Newton’s prophecies. He wasn’t a date-setter. He abhorred that kind of thing. He made his predictions to tamp down Second Coming fervour, not to exacerbate it. Anyway, he always said that the End Times couldn’t begin until certain things had come to pass — not that they would begin when they had.’
‘What about the 1260 years? Is that true?’
Luke grimaced. ‘Yes. But so what? Newton never linked it to the Second Donation of Pepin. He mentioned Pepin, yes, but only along with Phocas and Charlemagne and plenty of other possibilities. All Jay did was pick his preferred date, subtract 1260 from it, and see what fitted.’
‘And how about us finding the Ark today of all days?’
‘We found it today because these people went to extraordinary lengths to make sure we did. You think they’d have dug up St Paul’s if they hadn’t needed it till next year?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Luke. ‘There’s nothing ordained about all this. There’s nothing destined. We can still stop it. We have to stop it. If we don’t, it’ll be a bloodbath. Millions of people will die.’
She rattled her handcuff. ‘Fine. But how?’
‘By keeping our nerve. By waiting for our moment. It’ll come. And when it does, we have to seize it. No hesitation. No holding back. No regrets.’
Rachel gave a determined nod. ‘No regrets,’ she agreed.
II
The Prime Minister of Israel still had sleep in her eyes as she arrived in the cabinet room. The Interior Minister and the Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Finance and Intelligence were already there, while the Defence Ministry was represented by the Chief of the General Staff. And each of them were attended by flurries of frantic aides checking their devices and whispering breaking news into their bosses’ ears.
‘Are our captives from the Mount of Olives talking yet?’ she asked.
‘Not yet, Prime Minister,’ said Interior.
‘How are Gaza and the West Bank?’
He nodded briskly. ‘We have multiple reports of disorder, including several settlers’ homes on fire. At least a dozen rockets have been fired. No word on casualties yet.’
‘We’re taking fire in the north too,’ said the Chief of the General Staff. ‘Mortar shells mostly.’
‘Hezbollah?’
‘We imagine so.’
‘Any casualties?’
He shrugged. ‘If not yet, then soon.’
‘This is going to turn hot?’
‘It’s already hot. How much hotter it gets depends on the Dome. If these people bring it down …’ He shook his head. ‘We have to mobilize,’ he said.
‘If we mobilize, all our neighbours will mobilize too. It’ll only make things worse.’
‘With respect, Prime Minister, things already are worse. The moment the Dome comes down, we’ll be at war. We need to be ready.’
She looked around the table. Intelligence, Finance and Interior nodded, but Foreign Affairs was occupied with passing out copies of some new briefing paper. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Excuse me, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘That list of prisoners they want released: these are their biographies.’
‘Any pattern?’
‘Not that we can tell.’
The Prime Minister studied her copy of the list. She recognized most of the names, and the ones she didn’t recognize fell into similar categ
ories: Israeli citizens held on various charges in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. A mix of soldiers, spies, criminals and ordinary citizens who’d become victims of the region’s power games. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Manageable?’
Foreign Affairs nodded. ‘We’re already in the middle of exchange talks for many of them. We should be able to expedite.’
‘Prisoner exchange?’ scowled Interior. ‘It’s their damned Dome.’
‘We have to give up something,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘or they’ll blame us for it.’
‘They’ll blame us anyway. They always do.’
Intelligence had just received a briefing paper of his own. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘But I think we may have found out who’s behind this.’
‘And?’
‘His name’s Avram Kohen. We’ve had our eye on him for some time.’
‘You’ve had your eye on him?’ said Finance. ‘And yet he’s taken the Dome?’
‘With respect, if you didn’t keep cutting our budget-’
‘Enough!’ said the Prime Minister. This was no time for turf wars. ‘What makes you think it’s this man Kohen?’ she asked.
‘We’ve put equipment in the homes and offices of various people we’re watching. The moment this broke, we ran a roll-call. All were accounted for, except Kohen and some of his suspected associates. And we have an additional asset for Kohen: a live-in nephew. He assured us just a fortnight ago that nothing imminent was planned.’