Raiders Of the Lost Ark

by Campbell Black

  Eaton said, "This is all very interesting, I guess. But why would an American be mentioned in a Nazi cable, if we can get back to the point?"

  "He's the expert on Tanis," Indy said. "Tanis was his obsession. He even collected some of its relics. But he never found the city."

  "Why would the Nazis be interested in him?" Mus­grove asked.

  Indy paused for a moment. "It seems to me that the Nazis are looking for the headpiece to the Staff of Ra. And they think Abner has it."

  "The Staff of Ra," Eaton said. "It's all somewhat farfetched."

  Musgrove, who seemed more interested, leaned for­ward in his seat. "What is the Staff of Ra, Professor Jones?"

  "I'll draw you a picture," Indy said. He strode to the blackboard and began to sketch quickly. As he drew the chalk across the board, he said, "The Staff of Ra is supposedly the clue to the location of the Ark. A pretty clever clue into the bargain. It was basically a long stick, maybe six feet high, nobody's really sure. Anyhow, it was capped by an elaborate headpiece in the shape of the sun, with a crystal at its center. You still with me? You had to take the staff to a special map room in the city of Tanis-it had the whole city laid out in miniature. When you placed the staff in a certain spot in this room at a certain time of day, the sun would shine through the crystal in the headpiece and send down a beam of light to the map, giving you the location of the Well of the Souls-"

  "Where the Ark was concealed," Musgrove said.

  "Right. Which is probably why the Nazis want the headpiece. Which explains Ravenwood's name in the cable."

  Eaton got up and began moving around restlessly. "What does this Ark look like, anyhow?"

  "I'll show you," Indy said. He went quickly to the back of the hall, found a book, flipped the pages until he came to a large color print. He showed it to the two military officers. They stared in silence at the il­lustration, which depicted a biblical battle scene. The army of the Israelites was vanquishing its foe; at the forefront of the Israelite ranks were two men carrying the Ark of the Covenant, an oblong gold chest with two golden cherubim crowning it. The Israelites car­ried the chest by poles placed through special rings in the corners. A thing of quite extraordinary beauty -but more impressive than its appearance was the piercing and brilliant jet of white light and flame that issued from the wings of the angels, a jet that drove into the ranks of the retreating army, creating appar­ent terror and devastation.

  Impressed, Musgrove said, "What's that supposed to be coming out of the wings?"

  Indy shrugged. "Who knows? Lightning. Fire. The power of God. Whatever you call it, it was supposedly capable of leveling mountains and wasting entire re­gions. According to Moses, an army that carried the Ark before it was invincible." Indy looked at Eaton's face and decided, This guy has no imagination. Noth­ing will ever set this character on fire. Eaton shrugged and continued to stare at the illustration. Disbelief, Indy thought. Military skepticism.

  Musgrove said, "What are your own feelings about this ... so-called power of the Ark, Professor?"

  "As I said, it depends on your beliefs. It depends on whether you accept the myth as having some basis in truth."

  "You're sidestepping," Musgrove said and smiled.

  "I keep an open mind," Indy answered.

  Eaton turned away from the picture. "A nut like Hitler, though ... He might really believe in this power, right? He might buy the whole thing."

  "Probably," Indy said. He watched Eaton a mo­ment, suddenly feeling a familiar sense of anticipation, a rise in his temperature. The lost city of Tanis. The Well of the Souls. The Ark. There was an elusive melody here, and it enticed him like the seductive call of a siren.

  "He might imagine that with the Ark his military machine would be invincible," Eaton said, more to himself than to anybody else. "I can see, if he swal­lows the whole fairy tale, the psychological advantage he'd feel at the very least."

  Indy said, "There's one other thing. According to legend, the Ark will be recovered at the time of the coming of the true Messiah."

  "The true Messiah," Musgrove said.

  "Which is what Hitler probably imagines himself to be," Eaton remarked.

  There was a silence in the hall now. Indy looked once more at the illustration, the savagery of the light that flashed from the wings of the angels and scorched the retreating enemies. A power beyond all power. Beyond definition. He shut his eyes for a sec­ond. What if it was true? What if such a power did exist? Okay, you try to be rational, you try to work it like Eaton, putting it down to some old fable, something circulated by a bunch of zealous Israelites. A scare tactic against their enemies, a kind of psycho­logical warfare even. Just the same, there was some­thing here you couldn't ignore, couldn't shove aside.

  He opened his eyes and heard Musgrove sigh and say, "You've been very helpful. I hope we can call on you again if we need to."

  "Anytime, gentlemen. Anytime you like," Indy said.

  There was a round of handshakes, then Brody es­corted the officers to the door. Alone in the empty hall, Indy closed the book. He thought for a mo­ment, trying at the same time to suppress the sense of excitement he felt. The Nazis have found Tanis- and these words went around and around in his brain.

  The girl, Susan, said, "I really hope I didn't embar­rass you when you were with Brody. I mean, I was so . . . obvious."

  "You weren't obvious," Indy said.

  They were sitting together in the cluttered living

  room of Indy's small frame house. The room was

  filled with souvenirs of trips, of digs, restored clay

  vessels and tiny statues and fragments of pottery and

  maps and globes-as cluttered, he sometimes

  thought, as my life.

  The girl drew her knees up, hugging them, laying her face down against them. Like a cat, he thought. A tiny contented cat.

  "I love this room," she said. "I love the whole house ... but this room especially."

  Indy got up from the sofa and, hands in his pock­ets, walked around the room. The girl, for some rea­son, was more of an intrusion than she should have been. Sometimes when she spoke he tuned her out. He heard only the noise of her voice and not the meaning of her words. He poured himself a drink, sipped it, swallowed; it burned in his chest-a good burning, like a small sun glowing down there.

  Susan said, "You seem so distant tonight, Indy."

  "Distant?"

  "You've got something on your mind. I don't know." She shrugged.

  He walked to the radio, turned it on, barely listen­ing to the drone of someone making a pitch for Max­well House. The girl changed the station and then there was dance-band music. Distant, he thought. Farther than you could dream. Miles away. Oceans and continents and centuries. He was suddenly think­ing about Ravenwood, about the last conversation they'd had, the old man's terrible storm, his wrath. When he listened to the echoes of those voices, he felt sad, disappointed in himself; he'd taken some fragile trust and shattered it.

  Marion's infatuated with you, and you took ad­vantage of that.

  You're twenty-eight, presumably a grown man, and you've taken advantage of a young girl's brain­less infatuation and twisted it to suit your own pur­pose just because she thinks she's in love with you.

  Susan said, "If you want me to leave, Indy, I will. If you want to be alone, I'll understand."

  "It's okay. Really. Stay."

  There was a knock on the door; the porch creaked.

  Indy moved out of the living room along the hall­way and saw Marcus Brody outside. He was smiling a secretive smile, as if he had news he wanted to linger over, savor for as long as he could.

  "Marcus," Indy said. "I wasn't expecting you."

  "I think you were," Brody said, pushing the screen door.

  "We'll go in the study," Indy said.

  "What's wrong with the living room?"

  "Company."

  "Ah. What else?"

  They entered the study.

  "Yo
u did it, didn't you?" Indy said.

  Brody smiled. "They want you to get the Ark be­fore the Nazis."

  It was a moment before Indy could say anything. He felt a sense of exaltation, an awareness of triumph. The Ark. He said, "I think I've been waiting all my life to hear something like that."

  Brody looked at the shot glass in Indy's hand for a moment. "They talked with their people in Wash' ington. Then they consulted me. They want you, Indiana. They want you."

  Indy sat down behind his desk, gazed into his glass, then looked around the room. A strange emotion filled him suddenly; this was more than books and articles and maps, more than speculation, scholarly argument, discussion, debate-a sense of reality had replaced all the words and pictures.

  Brody said, "Of course, given the military mind, they don't exactly buy all that business about the power of the Ark and so forth. They don't want to embrace any such mythologies. After all, they're soldiers, and soldiers like to think they're hard-line realists. They want the Ark-and I'll quote, if I can -because of its 'historic and cultural significance' and because 'such a priceless object should not be­come the property of a fascist regime.' Or words to that effect."

  "Their reasons don't matter," Indy said.

  "In addition, they'll pay handsomely-"

  "I don't care about the money, either, Marcus." Indy raised a hand, indicated the room in a sweep. "The Ark represents the elusive thing I feel about archaeology-you know, history concealing its se­crets. Things lying out there waiting to be discovered. I don't give that for their reasons or their money." And he snapped his fingers.

  Brody nodded his head in understanding. "The museum, of course, will get the Ark."

  "Of course."

  "If it exists . . ." Brody paused a moment, then added, "We shouldn't build our hopes up too high."

  Indy stood up. "I have to find Abner first. That would be the logical step. If Abner has the headpiece, then I have to get it before the opposition does. That makes sense, right? Without the headpiece, voila, no Ark. So where do I find Abner?" He stopped, realizing how quickly he'd been talking. "I think I know where to start looking-"

  Brody said, "It's been a long time, Indiana. Things change."

  Indy stared at the other man for a second. The comment was enigmatic to him: Things change. And then he realized Marcus Brody was talking about Marion.

  "He might have mellowed toward you," Brody said. "On the other hand, he might still carry a grudge. In that case, it's reasonable to assume he wouldn't want to give you the headpiece. If in fact he has it."

  "We'll hope for the best, my friend."

  "Always the optimist, right?"

  "Not always," Indy said. "Optimism can be deadly."

  Brody was silent now, moving around the room, flicking the pages of books. Then he looked at Indy in a somber way. "I want you to be careful, Indiana."

  "I'm always careful."

  "You can be pretty reckless. I know that as well as you. But the Ark isn't like anything you've gone after before. It's bigger. More dangerous." Brody slammed a book shut, as if to emphasize a point. "I'm not skeptical, like those military people-I think the Ark has secrets. I think it has dangerous secrets."

  For a second Indy was about to say something flippant, something about the melodramatic tone in the other man's voice. But he saw from the expres­sion on Brody's face that the man was serious.

  "I don't want to lose you, Indiana, no matter how great the prize is. You understand?"

  The two men shook hands.

  Indy noticed that Brody's skin was damp with sweat.

  Alone, Indy sat up late into the night, unable to sleep, unable to let his mind rest. He wandered from one room of the small house to another, clenching and unclenching his hands. After all these years, he thought, all this passage of time-would Ravenwood help him? Would Ravenwood, given that he had the headpiece, come to his assistance? And behind these questions there lingered still another one. Would Marion still be with her father?

  He continued to go from room to room until finally he settled in his study and put his feet up on the desk, looking at the various objects stuffed in the room. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, tried to think clearly, and rose. From a bookshelf he removed a copy of Ravenwood's old journal, a gift from the old man when the two were still friends. Indy skimmed the pages, noticing one disappointment listed after another, one excavation that hadn't lived up to its promises, another that had revealed only the most slender, the most tantalizing, of clues to the where­ abouts of the Ark. The outlines of an obsession in these pages; the heartbreaking search for a lost ob­ject of history. But the Ark could flow in your blood and fill the air you breathed. And he understood the old man's single-mindedness, his devotion, the kind of lust that had led him from one country to an­ other, to one hope after another. The pages yielded up that much-but there was no mention of the head­ piece anywhere. Nothing.

  The last item in the journal mentioned the country of Nepal, the prospect of another dig. Nepal, Indy thought:" the Himalayas, the roughest terrain on earth. And a long way from whatever the Germans were doing in Egypt. Maybe Ravenwood had stum­bled onto something else back then, a fresh clue to the Ark. Maybe all the old stuff about Tanis was in­correct. Just maybe.

  Nepal. It was a place in which to start

  It was a beginning.

  He fingered the journal a moment longer, then he set it down, wishing he knew how Abner Ravenwood would react to him.

  And how Marion would respond.

  4: Berchtesgaden, Germany

  Dietrich was uneasy in the company of Rene Belloq. It wasn't so much the lack of trust he felt in the Frenchman, the feeling he had that Belloq treated almost everything with equal cynicism; it was, rather, the strange charisma of Belloq that worried Dietrich, the idea that somehow you wanted to like him, that he was drawing you in despite yourself.

  They were seated together in an anteroom at Berchtesgaden, the Fuhrer's mountain retreat, a place Dietrich had never visited before and which filled him with some awe. But he noticed that Belloq, lounging casually, his long legs outstretched, gave no sign of any similar feeling. Quite the opposite- Belloq might have been sitting sprawled in a cheap French cafe, in fact in the kind of place where Dietrich had found him in Marseilles. No respect, Dietrich thought. No sense of the importance of things. He was irritated by the archaeologist's atti­tude.

  He listened to a clock tick, the delicate sounds of chimes. Belloq sighed, shifted his legs around and looked at his wristwatch.

  "What are we waiting for, Dietrich?" he asked.

  Dietrich couldn't help talking in a low voice. "The Fuhrer will see us when he's ready, Belloq. You must think he has nothing better to do than spend his time speaking to you about some museum piece."

  "A museum piece." Belloq spoke with obvious con­tempt, staring across the room at the German. How little they know, he thought. How little they under­stand of history. They put their faith in all the wrong things: they build their monumental arches and parade their strutting armies-failing to realize you cannot deliberately create the awe of history. It is something that already exists, something you can­not aspire to fabricate with the trappings of gran­deur. The Ark: the very thought or the possibility of discovering the Ark made him impatient. Why did he have to speak with this miserable little Ger­man house painter, anyhow? Why was he obliged to sit through a meeting with the man when the dig had already begun in Egypt? What, after all, could he learn from Hitler? Nothing, he thought. Absolutely nothing. Some pompous lecture, perhaps. A diatribe of some kind. Something about the greatness of the Reich. About how, if the Ark existed, it belonged in Germany.

  What did any of them know? he wondered.

  The Ark didn't belong anywhere. If it had secrets, if it contained the kind of power it was said to, then he wanted to be the first to discover it-it wasn't something to be lightly entrusted to the maniac who sat, even now, in some other room of this mountain lodge and kept him waiting. />
  He sighed impatiently, shifting in his chair.

  And then he got up, walked to the window and looked out across the mountains, not really seeing them, noticing them only in an absent way. He was thinking of the moment of opening the box, looking in­side and seeing the relics of the stone tablets Moses had brought down from Mount Horeb. It was easy to imagine his hand raising the lid, the sound of his own voice-then the moment of revelation.

  The moment of a lifetime: there was no prize greater than the Ark of the Covenant.

  When he turned from the window, Dietrich was watching him. The German noticed the odd look in Belloq's eyes, the faint smile on the mouth that seemed to be directed inward, as if he were enjoying an im­mensely private joke, some deep and amusing thought. He realized then how far his own lack of trust went- but this was the Fuhrer's affair, it was the Fuhrer who had asked for the best, the Fuhrer who had asked for Rene Belloq.

  Dietrich heard the clock chime the quarter hour. From a corridor somewhere inside the building, he heard the sound of footsteps. Belloq turned expect­antly toward the door. But the footsteps faded and Belloq cursed quietly in French.

  "How much longer are we supposed to wait?" the Frenchman asked.

  Dietrich shrugged.

  "Don't tell me," Belloq said. "The Fuhrer lives his life by a clock to which we ordinary men have no ac­cess, correct? Perhaps he has visions of his own pri­vate time, no? Perhaps he thinks he has some profound knowledge of the nature of time?" Belloq made a gesture of despair with one hand, then he smiled.

  Dietrich moved uncomfortably, beset by the notion that the room was wired, that Hitler was listening to this insane talk. He said, "Does nothing awe you, Belloq?"

  "1 might answer you, Dietrich, except I doubt you would understand what I was talking about."