The Secret Chapel (god's lions)

by John Lyman

  Ariella brushed the hair back from her face and stood up next to her father. “This morning we used ground-penetrating radar and took some infrared pictures of an area revealed to us by the code in the Bible. The images from these two sources reveal some unusual anomalies in the substructure of the earth beneath the sand. There also appear to be remains of several man-made objects close-by. This is the area where we will begin our excavation, so be very careful in your digging. We have learned from the Bible code that something very old lies in this area of the desert, and many of you have heard that this object is connected to none other than Satan himself. Be that as it may, this is where we will begin our search. If anyone here decides they want to leave, please raise your hand, and we’ll make sure you have a seat on a truck leaving for Jerusalem within the hour.”

  Predictably, everyone in the tent looked to their right and their left, but no one raised their hand.

  “Good. Any questions before we get going?”

  One of the young female staff members from the villa spoke up. “I’ve never been on an archaeological dig or anything like this before. What do we do?”

  “There are several archaeologists here who will guide you out at the excavation site. Just follow their instructions and work at your own pace. Drink plenty of water, and see the medic if you start to feel weak or dizzy from the heat.”

  Lev pulled an unlit cigar from his mouth and stepped forward. “Also, a lot of you have asked me who the leader of this expedition is. We discussed this subject among ourselves this morning and decided the leadership will be shared equally between Father Leo Amodeo and myself. If you have any needs or concerns, feel free to ask either one of us. If we disagree on anything, we’ll put it to a vote in front of the whole camp.”

  “We really should get moving, Father,” Ariella said. “Are there any more questions?”

  No one spoke. They were all deep in thought as they lifted themselves away from the tables and began to file out of the tent to the waiting vehicles. Climbing up next to Lev in the back of one of the trucks, Leo glanced at Ariella sitting in another vehicle and wondered what it would have been like to have a child like her. “That’s some daughter you have, Lev. She’s smart and takes charge when things need to be done.”

  “Believe me, I know. Since she was a little girl, she’s been very independent and headstrong. My wife died when Ariella was only ten, so I’ve had to raise her pretty much by myself.”

  “Maybe we should have made her one of the leaders,” Leo said, causing both men to chuckle. He looked at Lev and studied the furrowed lines around his eyes, remembering their conversation of the night before. Was it possible that he was sitting next to a prophet; one that people would be talking and reading about a thousand years from now?

  The truck lurched forward, and the small line of vehicles drove the short distance to a spot in the desert pinpointed by Daniel from the coordinates he had discovered in the code.

  As soon as the trucks stopped, Ariella jumped out and began taking GPS readings of the site. Lev followed her with a bundle of wooden stakes with small white flags attached and directed the staff to pound them into the ground around the perimeter. Daniel then used a surveyor’s instrument to take laser sightings over the surface, marking an area where the group began placing more stakes, this time with yellow flags, inside the perimeter. In the very center, all the flags were red and formed a large circle.

  By nine in the morning, the sun beat down on the site with a fiery stillness as Ariella instructed the others to start digging along the perimeter by the white flags. They were assisted in their digging by a small backhoe that had just arrived from Jerusalem. In an effort to provide some shade, reinforcements from camp, including the cooks, had been called in to help erect an enormous canopy with open sides over the area where they would be digging. A much smaller open-sided tent was erected close by for use as an onsite archeological headquarters for the excavation.

  Under the cover of the smaller tent, laptop computers and photographic equipment filled half the space. In the other half, several members of the team were busy sketching detailed drawings of the site on two portable drafting tables that had been mounted atop a wooden floor hastily assembled to keep the sand at bay.

  Several staff members were assigned to pass out water to everyone on a regular basis in the oppressive heat as the team continued to dig, reaching the five-foot level along one section of the perimeter by midmorning.

  John removed his cap and shook the sweat from his hair before stepping into the shade of the site headquarters tent. Looking up from his computer, Daniel noticed John’s crimson face. He reached into a nearby ice chest and handed him a bottle of ice-cold water. “John, do you have that brick with you?”

  “It never leaves my side.” He hefted his new backpack up onto the table next to Daniel’s computer and removed it for him to examine. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’ve been searching through the Bible looking for anything in the code that mentioned that brick. I’m pretty sure I’ve just found what we’ve been looking for.”

  “Have you told Leo yet?”

  “I just called him on the radio. He’s on his way over.”

  John watched the pages scrolling on the computer screen while Daniel picked up the brick and held it in his hands, turning it over as he inspected it. He saw right away that there were no inscriptions that could be seen with the naked eye.

  The anticipation John felt was nerve-wracking. “Can you show me what you’ve found?”

  Daniel put the brick down and motioned for John to join him in front of the computer just as Leo’s jeep came roaring up to the tent and slid to a stop.

  “Thanks for getting here so quickly, Leo,” Daniel said. “I was about to show John the section that mentions the stone brick you found in the chapel.”

  Leo could barely contain his excitement. “We’ve been dying to know more about that brick ever since we laid eyes on it.”

  Daniel pointed to a page on the screen containing a section from the Bible. Several words and phrases written in Hebrew were interconnected and circled in red. “This is the grid where I found the reference to the stone brick. The words terrorist attacks were the first ones that jumped out at me. Next to that are the words New York, followed by the date September 11, 2001. Now, if you look down at the bottom of the page, you will see the words stone brick and wall of the chapel located between two phrases. The first phrase reads it is the key. The second one says, the attack is painted on the key.”

  Leo felt his heart race. “So what this is saying is that the brick is a key of some sort?”

  “Exactly, and it goes even further. Cross over to the edge of the page, and you will see the words the key will unlock that which belongs to Satan.”

  Leo picked up the brick and studied the painting. “I believe this image was painted on the brick with the intention of getting our attention. Morelli told me that the code is like a time lock revealed only to the right people at the right time. This brick was not meant to be found or even understood until this exact time in history. Before 9/11, the painting would have been interesting, but meaningless.”

  “At least now we know it’s a key of some sort,” John said.

  Leo handed the brick to John. “John, you need to watch this brick like a snake in the room until we need it, whenever that may be. I think Lev will be overjoyed with this new information. Have you told him yet, Daniel?”

  “No, he drove back into camp to get some more supplies. I thought you might like to surprise him with the news.”

  The three men sat in the shade of the tent, drinking cold water and taking turns examining the ancient brick, while, at the excavation site, Ariella was in her element, digging in the dirt. A female staff member by the name of Maya was working next to her in the trench and paused to take a drink from her canteen. “You know, Ariella, Satan’s not going to let us dig something out of the ground that belongs to him, load it on a truck, and just drive out o
f the desert with it. What do you think we’re really looking for?”

  “In archaeology, you just keep digging until something is slowly revealed. You can’t rush it. We’re going to have to take our time and be patient. That’s what makes the experience so exciting. It’s like unwrapping a present and you can’t wait to see what’s inside.”

  Maya removed a pale blue baseball cap and poured water over her head, letting it drip off the ends of her short black hair. “There are all kinds of rumors going around camp. Some of the staff are really spooked. One of them even decided he’d had enough and quit. He rode back into town with the truck that brought the backhoe out here this morning.”

  “You know as well as I do, Maya, that some people are just not cut out to … hello?” Ariella’s spade had just struck something hard in the sand. “What’s this?”

  “It looks like metal,” Maya said. “Should I call Lev on the radio?”

  “Good idea. Ask him to bring my camera.”

  Ariella produced a brush from her pocket and began brushing away the sand from the object while Maya grabbed her radio and called Lev who was still back in camp. The excited chatter on everyone’s radios alerted Leo and the others to rush out to the site to see what Ariella had found.

  Arriving at the freshly dug trench, they saw that Ariella and Maya had just finished removing most of the sand from around the top of a buried object. “It’s metal alright,” Ariella said. “It looks like the paint’s been burned off by something really hot.”

  News of the discovery was spreading. Everyone stopped what they were doing and began to crowd around as Ariella and Maya continued to reveal more metal, making it obvious that they had uncovered only part of a much larger object buried below.

  Lev had finally arrived with Ariella’s camera and began shouting orders. “Everyone grab a shovel. We need to enlarge this trench, but be very careful. We’ll take a reading with the metal detector to get an idea of its size and dig around it, then work our way in.”

  The enthusiastic group began to dig without thought to the heat, and within an hour, the burned remains of a vintage World War II era military truck began to materialize.

  Ariella jumped up on the edge of the widening excavation and began taking pictures. “This is probably one of the man-made objects we spotted with the infrared pictures we took earlier.”

  Farther away from the truck, one of the workers pushed a shovel into the ground, and a definite crunch could be heard.

  “Stop!” Ariella shouted. She ran over to the area where the worker was standing and jumped down into a newly excavated area where a second object had been discovered. Once again, she began to methodically brush away the dirt, gradually revealing something that caused those around her to gasp. She had just uncovered the unmistakable face of a blackened skull. As some of the workers unconsciously began to back away, Leo made the sign of the cross and uttered a silent prayer.

  As the significance of their discovery began to sink in, Lev knelt down to assist his daughter, slowly revealing a complete skeleton next to the remains of the truck. Burned bits of clothing, along with leather boots and metal buttons with insignia, were all that remained of what obviously had once been a military uniform.

  Ariella wiped some dirt off her forehead and looked up at Lev. “What do you think this is, Father?”

  Lev peered down at the skeleton. “I’m not sure. I think the better question would be who is this? These remains could be from the fighting during the 1940’s. It looks like this vehicle took a direct hit from a bomb of some sort. Let’s take some pictures of the buttons and the insignia and e-mail them to the university in Jerusalem. We should have some sort of identification of the uniform within a few hours.”

  Daniel, working on a hunch, grabbed a metal detector and began walking in a straight line away from the perimeter. The needle on the meter spiked, and he heard a loud tone in his earphones. The sound faded before increasing in intensity again as he approached an area where the detector registered another large metal object. He made some notes and walked back to the excavation to confer with Lev and Ariella.

  “I think what we have here is an entire convoy of trucks,” Daniel said. “The readings go on in a straight line, and the objects are roughly the same size as the one we just uncovered. There is one object smaller than the rest at the end of the line. It’s about the size of a car.”

  Lev looked out over the site. “Let’s dig that one up first. It’s probably the commander’s vehicle.”

  One of the men jumped into the backhoe and they struck out for the end of the line along with several workers. Within twenty minutes, they began to uncover the burned remains of a jeep. Some of the drab olive paint was still evident, but nothing else remained to give any hint at the country of origin.

  Digging more carefully now, Ariella began to use a small spade. She worked the soil around the jeep until she began to see bones. They were the blackened bones of a hand. Replacing the spade with a brush, she gently spread the soil away from around the bones until she spotted the edge of a small white piece of paper lying close-by in the sand. Reaching down with her fingers, she gently lifted up what appeared to be a partially burned photograph and held it in her hand. Tears began to form in her eyes. The scorched but well-preserved picture was that of a young woman and a baby, and somehow, Ariella knew that she had just uncovered someone’s husband and father.

  It was past noon, and the sun was directly above the site, turning the desert floor into a furnace and prompting the medic to call for a halt to any further work until the temperature fell to safe levels. Lev lifted his daughter from the site as everyone gathered around and Father Leo blessed the body of the soldier. With a sense of overwhelming sadness, they all climbed into the back of a truck and rode back to camp in silence.

  While lunch was being prepared, the group recovered in the refrigerated air of the communications tent. Pictures of the items Ariella had found were e-mailed to the university and within the hour, the team had received confirmation that the military convoy they had just uncovered was British. In a strange twist, they were informed that, coincidentally, a thirty-man patrol had vanished in this desert in 1948 when the British had been in the process of pulling out of Palestine after the U.N. partition of the Holy Land. All efforts by the British government to locate the patrol had failed due to strange weather phenomenon that hampered the search until they were forced to quit. The final report read, “Loss of unit in presumed military action with unknown aggressors.”

  “They never knew for sure what happened to those men,” Lev said. “At least their families can have some closure now.”

  “Do you think it has anything to do with what we’re looking for?” Leo asked, hoping Lev had some sort of picture in his mind of what had happened out there in the desert.

  “Probably just a coincidence.” Lev seemed lost in thought, as though something else was troubling him.

  Moshe was at the communications console, finishing a conversation on his satellite phone, when he looked up at the two leaders. “We have a political issue to worry about now. We’ve uncovered a military grave site, and it’s already getting attention in Jerusalem and in England. We need to step up our operations.”

  Leo glanced over at Lev. “What do you think about going to a twenty-four-hour schedule? It will be cooler at night, and we still have a lot of ground to cover.”

  The sweat was beginning to dry on Lev’s head in the coolness of the tent as he ran his hands through his hair. “I’ll have another generator and some more floodlights flown out tonight. One of my staff got heat exhaustion today and had to be flown to the hospital in Jerusalem. Some more of my top people are flying out here in a few hours to help.”

  “We also have another problem,” Moshe said. “The young man who quit this morning and hitched a ride into Jerusalem on one of our trucks has vanished.”

  “What do you mean vanished?” Leo asked.

  “He jumped out of the truck when it came to a s
top at a red light and ran away down a side street.”

  Alon entered the tent, catching the last part of the discussion. “He must have been pretty freaked out about something.”

  “No, there’s more. We checked his name against our database and couldn’t find him. He’s not one of ours.”

  “How the hell did that happen?” Alon practically shouted.

  Moshe twirled one end of his moustache. “He must have found his way onto one of our trucks on the way out here last night. He never would have made it through security onto the grounds at the villa, so it probably happened when the trucks stopped for gas in Jerusalem. We have a lot of new students living at the villa now, and many are still new to each other. He probably just kind of blended in after everyone was getting back into the trucks from the restrooms. He was smart enough to know that we would be on to him today, so he pretended he’d had enough and hitched a ride out of camp.”

  “Great security.” Alon was beside himself. Although Moshe was the security chief for the entire organization, Alon had been given direct command over camp security, and it had been breached.

  Alon spoke through clenched teeth. “Have we found out who he is or what he was looking for?”

  Moshe watched Alon continue to seethe. “We don’t have a clue at this time. He could have been one of those Vatican security people who have been following Leo and John.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” Leo said.

  Moshe wanted to help calm Alon. “Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now. We’ve run a security sweep of the camp to check for bugs and explosives. Nothing’s turned up. Why don’t we all go over to the mess tent and have lunch? We can’t resume work on the dig anyway until it gets cooler.”

  “That sounds good to me,” John said, feeling hungry as usual. “I think I’ll go check on Ariella and see if she’s hungry too.”