The Medusa stone

by Jack Du Brul

  The sun approached at five, rouging the sky. Amazingly, Mercer and Selome had traveled nearly twenty miles, their route eastward more direct as the gaps between mountains widened. Still there were untold miles remaining, and as Mercer began searching for another cave in which to hole up, he knew they would never see the end of their journey. When the sun went down again, they might cover a few more miles, but most likely, this stop would be their last. In desperation, Mercer sucked at the blood that dripped from his cracked lips.

  His eyes were nearly closed by dehydration and the fast-approaching sunrise. Beyond a few feet, ss labored, a tiny but noticeable smile on his face.

  The Monastery of Debre Amlak

  An unfamiliar sensation brought Mercer awake, and it took him a moment to recognize what it was. A mattress! Oh, Jesus! Worn to little more than the thickness of a blanket and covered with sheets of the roughest cotton, it still felt as if he were resting on clouds. His whole body ached, his feet and legs especially. However, it was a reassuring pain that told him he was still alive. He shifted under the bedding; the blisters on his feet smeared open against the sheets. He gasped and shot up in bed, grabbing for his stinging heel. Instantly, his vision clouded over and his head swam. He collapsed back against the flat pillow, his sore feet all but forgotten.

  Selome! Her image flooded his mind, and once again he struggled upright, his arms flailing to free himself from the sheets' tangling embrace. He had to find her; nothing else mattered. Then he heard a voice and he looked to his right. The room was just large enough for the bed, a desk, and a chair. The walls were white and clean, the floors were bare and well swept, and through the single window he could see it was twilight. A crucifix above the desk was the room's only decoration. A young boy dressed in a long robe stood at Mercer's bedside. He spoke again in Tigrinyan, ignoring Mercer's incomprehension.

  "Selam," Mercer finally croaked.

  "Selam, Selam," the youth greeted. "Kemayla-ha?"

  The boy must have been asking about his condition. "Hmak." Bad. It was one of the few words Mercer had learned.

  "Shemay Tedla iyu," the boy said, pointing at his chest. "Men shem-ka?"

  Mercer understood the boy's name was Tedla. He pointed to himself. "Mercer," then added, "Selome?"

  The boy gave a lengthy reply, but Mercer understood none of it. He let out a frustrated breath. Tedla poured water from a pewter pitcher and held it for him.

  After draining the cup, Mercer settled under the coarse blankets and was asleep in moments. The next time he woke, he was alone and his room was dark except for a single candle burning on the desk. In its glow, he saw that a plate of fruit had been left for him. He had recovered enough to be hungry and reached for it, wolfing two man-goes and a banana before weakness overcame him and he was back asleep.

  The candle had gone out when he regained consciousness again. A haunting sound echoed beyond his chamber. Mercer was disoriented, nearly panicked by the darkness, his own weakness, and the faint noise. Slowly his mind brought him back to the present, and his heart rate eased. He recognized the noise as a song, a chant. Then he remembered everything in a rush, the march through the desert, Selome's finding the water in the cave. Fuzzy pictures flashed in his mind of men carrying him and Selome from the cave up a steep trail to an ancient building. He lay in the darkness and smiled, letting the monks at their midnight prayer serenade him back to sleep. They'd made it to the monastery!

  When the sun woke him, Mercer had enough strength to lever himself out of bed and dress. His clothes had been laundered and lay in a bundle on the desk. He was surprised to find he needed to use the chamber pot sitting under the bed. At least his kidneys were still functioning.

  Once in the hallway, Mercer began to weaken but he continued past s large cleared table dominating the room. He sat at one of the chairs and lay his head on the tabletop, his breath coming in uneven gasps. Selome. He needed to find her.

  He must have passed out again because suddenly Tedla was taping at his shoulder and speaking to him gently. "Where is everybody?" Mercer asked.

  Tedla held up a finger to indicate Mercer was to wait and scampered from the room. A minute later, he returned with another, older monk. There was a reassuring air about the man, a comforting quality that radiated trust. It wasn't just the gray beard and the long dark robe. There was something behind his eyes that spoke of compassion and understanding.

  "Selam," Mercer greeted. "Do you speak English?"

  "Selam. No. Italiano?"

  Mercer shook his head. "Parlez-vous francais?"

  "Un peu." A little.

  Mercer switched effortlessly into French, but he spoke too fast for the monk and had to slow. "My name is Philip Mercer. I'm a mine engineer working here in Eritrea."

  "Selome Nagast is awake for many hours, Monsieur Mercer. I know who you are. My name is Brother Ephraim."

  "How long have we been here?" Mercer could barely understand the monk through his thick accent.

  "Last night was your second."

  Mercer had slept through nearly thirty-six hours! The Eritrean refugees would be reaching the mine soon; maybe they were already there. He felt his chest tighten with a new panic. "I need to leave."

  Ephraim spoke to his acolyte and Tedla ran off, leaving Mercer alone with him. It was clear that they would need a translator if they were to continue their conversation. Soon after, Selome entered. Her ordeal had dulled her eyes some, but she was still beautiful. The weight loss made her already high cheekbones more prominent and her eyes larger. Relief flushed through Mercer and he closed his eyes, opening them again to drink her in. When he tried to stand and meet her embrace, she held him to his chair, her arms twined around his neck, her cheek laid against his. "How are you?" she asked softly.

  Before Mercer could reply, Brother Ephraim coughed, drawing their attention. Selome pulled away and adopted a demure attitude in front of the ascetic. He spoke for several minutes, Selome thinking through her translation before turning back to Mercer.

  "Brother Ephraim is the monastery's abbot and he welcomes us to Debre Amlak. He says it is highly irregular for a woman to be allowed within the compound, and he is concerned about our relationship." She spoke to Ephraim for a moment and then switched back to English. "I told him that you are a man of honor and I am a chaste woman who is promised to another."

  "You lied to a priest?"

  "What should I have told him?"

  "You shouldn't have said I'm a man of honor, that's all." Mercer suppressed a grin. "Tell our host that any carnal thoughts in my condition are impossible. Thank him for his hospitality and for carrying us up from the cave and ask him how he managed to find us."

  "He says that the cave is his retreat from the monastery, a place for him to enjoy an even greater sense of solitude. He discovered us himself and went to get other monks to bring us here."

  "A retreat from a retreat?" Mercer wondered aloud, thankful nonetheless.Seeing his bewilderment, she explained in simpler terms. "Solomon's son stole the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple and spirited it back to his own kingdom."

  Mercer could not believe he'd heard correctly. "The Ark of the Covenant? That's what this is all about?" He could tell that she hadn't wanted to reveal any of this, and his anger mounted. This was what she'd been hiding from the beginning. "The diamonds are meaningless to you. You're all after the Ark and think it's hidden in the mine."

  "Yes. Defense Minister Levine's agents are in Eritrea to find it and return it to Israel." Selome's voice took on a strident note, full of emotion and fear. "It will give him the moral authority to destroy the Dome of the Rock and erect the Third Temple."

  Mercer was thoughtful for a moment. "I'd make him Emperor for Life if he pulled off a feat like that. But the Ark of the Covenant? You can't be serious. Selome, I'm not doubting your faith, but the Old Testament and this Glory of Kings aren't historical fact. They're stories."

  "So was the Iliad until Heinrich Schliemann used it as a reference book," Se
lome countered hotly, "and discovered the city of Troy, a place many archaeologists said existed only in folklore. If you'll hear me out, you'll see Ephraim's story lends credence to Levine's plan."

  "How so?" he asked with little interest. This was too much to believe.

  "Soon after returning to Ethiopia with the Ark, Menyelek became embroiled in a number of wars, expanding Ethiopian territory as far as India. The revenue from trade caravans weren't enough to pay for his campaigns, so one of his priests, Azariah, told him of a mountain of diamonds far to the north of their capital.

  "The Shame of Kings describes the discovery of this fabulous mountain and the history of the mining operation. The priests in charge used soldiers captured during Menyelek's battles to do the actual work. After the wars had ended, the priests turned to slave labor brought from Kush, modern-day Sudan. According to the book, the conditions were terrible and the worst was yet to come. After a hundred years, the workers had exhausted the diamonds that could be recovered from the surface and they were forced to tunnel into the earth. At first they used pygmies because of their smaller stature, but they died quickly in the shafts. One passage of the Shame of Kings laments this, for it had seemed like a promising idea."

  "And it was still the priests using slaves to dig?"

  "Yes." Selome obviously didn't want to continue, but she did, her voice heavy. "Because the pygmies didn't work out, the mine's overseers started using children. Boys and girls as young as six were herded into the mine, never to return. Female slaves were used as breeding stock to replenish the losses. It sounds like a system more cruel than what the Nazis did during the Holocaust, and the mine was in operation for over four hundred years. Countless tens of thousands of innocent lives were snuffed in a subterranean hell and the perpetrators of this atrocity were followers of Judaism."

  "Selome, it happened two thousand years ago."

  "Brother Ephraim says they were proud of what they did. Not only does the book describe some of the huge gems they found, but it also talks about the inhuman conditions and the practices used to get more work out of the children. If hate groups and anti-Semites found out that the first concentration camps were built by Jews, do you think it would matter howwanted to disagree, but he had a suspicion that she was right. Hate was an easy commodity to sell. "Okay, I'll grant you the Shame of Kings is right about an ancient mine in northern Eritrea," he conceded. "The awful working conditions ring true and I know using children in mines was a common practice until just a hundred years ago, but what does this have to do with Levine and the Ark?"

  "Levine's quest dates back two decades. He's always been obsessed with holy relics, especially the Ark. When Operation Moses rescued Ethiopian Jews in 1984, he had the refugees questioned about religious artifacts left in their home country. Rumor surrounded a particular church, St. Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia's ancient capital. Some said the Ark was still there. Levine secretly sent a team of agents to break into the church, but they found nothing to convince them that it had ever been a resting place for the Ark."

  "And he still thought it was in Ethiopia?" he scoffed.

  "Goddamn it, Mercer! It doesn't matter if you believe this or not. Levine does, and as long as he's holding your friend Harry, that's all that's important. Enough people have died in the past weeks to convince you that your doubts don't mean anything."

  Mercer's scientific background made him naturally skeptical, but he suddenly realized she was right. It was Levine's motivation that mattered, not its validity. And even if he didn't believe, he knew he shouldn't close his mind to the possibilities. Hadn't the Shame of Kings been correct about the mine? "I'm sorry, this is all so . . . Anyway, you were saying Levine thought the Ark was here."

  "Ethiopia is the oldest Christian country in the world and has Jewish ties that date back even further. Besides, he was certain it wasn't in Israel. There isn't much of our country that hasn't been combed by archaeologists. Levine started to investigate some of the less-credible rumors the refugees brought with them. He learned that the Ark might have been on an island on Lake Tana but that also turned out to be a false lead. The only other reference he got to the Ark was a story about a golden chest placed in an ancient mine to help ward off an evil that was killing the workers long, long ago. When Levine saw the kimberlite pipe on the Medusa photographs, he was sure he'd find the mine the refugees spoke of. He also felt that somewhere near the pipe, he'd discover the Ark's final repository."

  "He doesn't know that the mine was dug by Solomon's son?"

  "He wouldn't care. It's the Ark he's after."

  "Does the Shame of Kings say that the Ark's in the mine?"

  "Not in so many words. The rumor of the golden chest Levine is following probably came from it, from someone who read it ages ago. The Shame of Kings does talk about a curse that killed the children, a mysterious illness caused by Satan that made it impossible to continue work in the tunnels. To combat it, a powerful talisman was brought to the mine and placed in a special chamber that was dug to the exact specifications of the Ark's original tabernacle in Jerusalem. It says nothing about it ever being removed."

  "Did it work? Did the talisman prevent the disease?"

  Selome asked Ephraim. "The children died in greater numbers, and soon afterward the priests realized that God was punishing them for what they'd done. They sealed the mine and never revealed its location."

  For a moment Mercer allowed himself to speculate. Since the mine they discovered was undoubtedly the same one written about in the Shame of Kings, wa it possible that the rest of the story was also true? The mine had lain undisturbed for two thousand years, and if the talisman it mentioned was indeed the Ark of the Covenant, then it could still be there, buried under countless tons of rock, waiting to be discovered. He took his silent musings one step further and considered the consequences if Levine managed to find it and return it to Israel. The Mideast would explode in a religious war that would make the past fifty years of conflict seem like petty squabbling. Selome was right when she said that Levine would use its symbolism to raze the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred site in Islam. If that happened, Mercer imagined the ensuing war would go nuclear as Muslims from all over the globe used their numerical superiority to overpower the Israelis and recapture the Temple Mount. It was a doomsday scenario that Mercer knew could happen, would happen, if he didn't stop it.

  This was all too much. Just days ago he found he might have discovered King Solomon's mine, and now Mercer found that he was in a race to find the Ark of the Covenant. If he wasn't so weak and tired, he would have been terrified. The desert trek had left him in a worse condition than Selome, and his mind was beginning to fade again. He couldn't absorb any more information. "I bet the Sudanese don't know anything about this. Their backers are after the diamonds while Harry's kidnappers, Levine ultimately, want an archaeological artifact lost thousands of years ago."

  "Yes, and they're both located in the Valley of Dead Children."

  Suddenly the meaning behind the valley's name became shudderingly obvious.

  "We should be thankful we still have time. Judging by the excavating we did before coming to the monastery, it'll take weeks to reopen the mine." And then Mercer remembered. "Oh shit! There are about two hundred refugees there right now. The Sudanese who attacked us are probably using them as forced labor as we speak. They might already have it opened!"

  Mercer hadn't told her about the displaced Eritreans he had coming from the camps in Sudan, and her expression registered her shock. "Where'd they come from?"

  "When we were with the nomads in Badn getting fuel, I hired one of the headman's sons to get them and bring them to the valley." Guilt cracked Mercer's voice, but beneath it was a grim determination to see them freed.

  Selome spoke with Brother Ephraim for a few minutes, then turned back. "He says it's impossible to reach any town until after the Adobha has subsided. The river is impassable for at least three weeks."

  "We have no choice. We ha
ve to cross it."

  Ephraim seemed to understand Mercer's foul expression and his defiant outburst. Selome performed an almost simultaneous translation. "The river moves with the speed and force of a truck, and it's littered with debris washed down from the highlands. The flood would destroy any raft we could build. Every year, dozens of people die trying to cross it. Be sensible."

  "I don't have that luxury. People's lives depend on us, not only those refugees but also Habte, the two drivers, and my friend Harry White. And if, somehow, the Ark really is in the mine, then maybe the rest of the world, too. I'll be sensible when the Eritrean military arrives at the mine and arrests anyone holding a gun."

  Selome asked the monk a couple more questions, the priest's response seeming to calm her anxiety. "He says the talisman spoken of in the Shame of Kings was placed in the deepest part of the mine, buried r. It was too dark to see more than a shadowy form, so he threw on his pants and boots and slid from his room. The cloister's entrance was off the refectory, and he was aware of the wooden floors creaking as he walked. He feared that he would wake the monks.

  Selome stood at the center of the pillared cloister, her body barely illuminated by the moon and stars. She kept her eyes locked with his as he crossed to her slowly.

  "I was hoping it would be you," she whispered. "Despite his status as an acolyte, I'm afraid Tedla has taken a fancy to me."

  "I was hoping that it was you, too," Mercer replied softly. "I want to say thanks. You were right. I'd never have made it to Ila Babu."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Much better, but I'm still as weak as a kitten."

  "How weak?" she asked with a huskiness that Mercer recognized immediately. She moved a few paces closer to him, the heat of her body soaking into his skin.