by Daniel Diehl
Father Marcos lifted his head, turned his face toward Jason’s and offered a wan smile. “You may well have solved a three thousand year old mystery, young man. But without the disk we are no closer to opening the Ark than we have ever been.”
Jason’s mind was racing so fast he could hardly keep his thoughts straight; this was getting more complicated by the minute. The whole point of this expedition was to find a way to seal the dragon gate forever, and at least a part of that plan included destroying Morgana’s ability to communicate with the Dragon Lords. To seal the gate they needed the Urim and Thummim and to get to them they had to open the Ark which, it now seemed, they could only do by stealing the communication disk.
“Father,” Jason turned the old man around so they were nearly nose-to-nose “if I can find the disk of Amun-Ra and open the Ark for you, will you give me the two stones that I believe are inside?”
“My son, if you can open the Ark of the Covenant you may have the stones with the blessings of the Coptic Church and all the rest of God’s children.” Smiling broadly, the guardian added slyly, “Who knows, with the back of the Mercy Seat reunited with the rest of the Ark, the Schechinah may return and bring God’s grace back to a perilously troubled world.”
Jason impulsively gave the old man a warm hug before jumping to his feet, hauling Fr Marcos after him.
“Come on, Father, lead me out of here. I have a lot of work to do and I have to get back to England to do it. Oh, and when we get upstairs, don’t let me forget; I owe you one ancient Gnostic book to add to your collection.”
Clapping Jason on the back, Fr Marcos led the way through the treasure-filled labyrinth and back up toward the real world.
* * *
“It would appear that despite frightening the old priest half to death, the little show I put on had the desired effect.”
“You have no idea. Were you following me in the scrying glass when he showed me to the Ark?”
“I followed you through the little door and down the first few steps but then it was too dark to see anything clearly. But tell me, please, did you actually see the Ark of the Covenant?”
Merlin’s voice was so overcome with emotion that it was shaking, and Jason had to remind him to calm himself before telling him all he had seen and learned. Slowly, trying to put each detail into some coherent order, Jason explained the Egyptian legend of the snake god Apep devouring the sun and how he had come to believe that Morgana’s communicator disk had actually been an original part of the Ark of the Covenant. Most importantly, if the disk was returned to the Ark, he thought it would allow him access to the Urim and Thummim.
“So you believe that if the disk from the communicator is rejoined to the Ark it will act as a key and allow you to open the lid?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then your friend, Fr Cunningham, was right. The Hebrews stole the Ark when they fled from Egypt to begin their wanderings in the desert.”
“Merlin, don’t you see, that’s only half of it. This means that Moses knew exactly how dangerous the disk is. I think he stole the Ark to keep pharaoh or his high priests from contacting the Dragon Lords.”
There was a long silence before Merlin’s voice came back through Jason’s mobile phone. “Do you have any idea of the implications of what you are saying, Jason?”
“That the Egyptian legend of Apep is at least partly based in truth; that the dragons have been trying to find a way into the world for at least three-and-a-half thousand years; that the Ark of the Covenant was actually part of the first communicating device that allowed the dragons to talk to people here on earth? Yeah, I think I have a damn good idea of the implications. The question is; what are we going to do about it?”
“I think you had better come home as soon as you can. Destroying the disk is now out of the question; you need it to open the Ark.”
Jason nodded to himself in silent acknowledgement of how impossibly complex this was all becoming. “I know. And that means we need to figure out a way to steal the disk and get it back here to Ethiopia as soon as possible.”
“But you told me months ago that Morgana has security devices and guards and other means of protecting her offices that would make it virtually impossible to break in to Excalibur Holdings.”
“And we have to assume she is going to have just as much security installed in the cave before she moves the communicator there.”
“Jason, that doesn’t leave us much of…what do you call it…a window of opportunity?”
“I think the only chance we have of stealing the disk is to grab it while it’s in transit between her offices in Cardiff and the caves.”
“Do you realize the complexity of what you’re suggesting, my boy?”
“I guess I’d better start back first thing in the morning, huh?”
Chapter Thirteen
As Morgana le Fay paced back and forth in front of the large white screen, light from the overhead projector rippled across her shapely form, obscuring the brilliant crimson hue of her raw silk business suit. Behind her, on the screen, a map of the Hellfire caves was alternately revealed and distorted with Morgana’s continual passing. Down one side of the long mahogany table that dominated Excalibur Holding Company’s boardroom, Peter Haskell and four members of his engineering team kept their eyes riveted on their CEO as she marched one way and then the other, alternately giving orders and demanding that they repeat her instructions like recalcitrant school children doomed to recite their teacher’s every word.
“Do you have all that, Peter?”
“Yes, Mrs Morgan. The locations where you want us to install the motion detectors and the heat sensors are perfectly clear. We can have both systems installed and operational in the big circular room before the end of this week but the ones at the mouth of the cave can’t be turned on until the security doors are in place. It’s purely a physical problem; until we can keep out the rain and fog, we don’t dare turn on the security system without running the risk of having moisture shorting out the entire system.”
Even in the semidarkness everyone in the room could follow Morgana’s head as it turned to bore a hole through her executive assistant, Jerry McGuire, who sat on the opposite side of the conference table from Peter Haskell and his people. The only one who was not looking at either Morgana or Jerry McGuire was Jerry McGuire, who had his eyes fixed firmly on the note pad laying in front of him, even though he could not possibly read what was on it in the subdued light.
“Well, Jerry, that one is your problem. How is my security door coming along?”
Jerry raised his eyebrows, cleared his throat and spoke directly to his note pad. He did not fail to look at his boss because she terrified him – which she did – but because everyone terrified him. For Morgana le Fay this was the best kind of employee – the ones who were too frightened of losing their job to do anything or say anything or think anything other than what they were instructed to do, say and think. When he finally spoke his voice cracked slightly before he found the courage to continue.
“The lads in the physical plant have the gate nearly finished. They just have to sort out the best type of weatherproof seal to go round the perimeter. They say the whole unit should be ready to install by the end of this week.” As a bold afterthought, and after a long pause punctuated by a jerking smile, he added “I’ve seen it and its really nice looking.”
“Thank you for that, Jerry. If I cared bugger-all for an aesthetic opinion on blast proof security doors I would have rung up Martha fucking Stewart.”
When Morgana turned back to the whiteboard and tapped one scarlet fingernail on the circular area representing Sir Francis Dashwood’s dining hall – and now her own center of operations - faces around the table winced in sympathetic embarrassment for McGuire, knowing they all suffered the same humiliating treatment with painful regularity.
“Now. Peter, will you have the portable generator ready to install once the door is in place?”
“Absolutely, ma’
am.”
“Good. Then I think that’s all for now. If you can all get yourselves in gear after this little fun fair you can crawl back to your garrets and get some serious work done. Jerry, get the lights and clean up this mess.” By the time the overhead lights flickered to life Morgana had already left the room, the last remnant of her to make its way through the slowly closing door was the fluttering tail of the pale violet scarf pinned over one shoulder. Without so much as acknowledging the presence of anyone she passed in the corridor, she headed straight toward the private elevator which took her directly to the top floor of the Excalibur building and the expensively impersonal décor of her penthouse apartment. In the long, low-ceilinged lounge George was carefully arranging a huge vase of fresh Bird of Paradise flowers, identical to the bouquet which had been delivered every day since she moved in to the penthouse and identical to the one which would be delivered tomorrow and every day thereafter. As Morgana moved purposefully across the plush Berber carpeting the butler never raised his eyes from his work.
“I’m going to my library, George. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Very good, Madame.”
After she passed out of the room, George rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed before returning his attention to the bright orange blossoms in the vase.
The normally well-ordered tranquility of Morgana’s library had given way to near chaos as the maze of crystals and computer hardware from the communicating device were stripped from their alcoves and niches in the oak bookcases and packed into crates and boxes. Morgana refused to allow a single piece of the equipment to be removed from the room until the cave was finished and ready to receive its most important installation. Elsewhere in the room the big desk had been moved from its accustomed place, the sumptuous Persian rug was rolled up and slid to one side, and all along one wall of bookcases stood heavy wooden crates. The presence of the crates made it nearly impossible for her to access the profusion of ancient manuscripts and scrolls that had been removed from their accustomed place in the alcove to be distributed among the hundreds of modern books lining the shelves.
Surveying the confusion, Morgana shook her head, pulled out her desk chair and turned her back on the disorder, concentrating her full attention on the small antique hand mirror she pulled from the top drawer of her desk. The mirror had been a gift from Lucrezia Borgia whom Morgana had considered a close, if rather indiscrete, friend. The mirror’s face was crystal, rather than glass, and it was backed not with silver but with crushed diamonds. The delicately worked oval frame and handle were pure gold. As an antique the mirror was undoubtedly worth hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, but its greatest value lay in its use as a scrying glass.
Nearly every day Morgana dedicated at least an hour to spying on her enemies, checking up on their whereabouts and their activities, just to make sure she always remained one step ahead of any plans they might be making – particularly if those plans concerned her or the Excalibur Holding Company. Similarly, she kept tabs on anyone foolish enough to trust her or do business with her because she was always keen to find an opening to ruin an associate’s business or indulge in a harmless spot of blackmail. But sometimes, like today, she simply surfed. Relying on the mirror’s nearly endless capacity to remember the physical vibrations of anyone to whom it had ever been aligned, she could release control and allow it to shift from individual to individual at random. Even when it proved to be a futile exercise it was relaxing to spy on the small, petty existence of people whose mayfly lives lasted only a handful of decades. Now she had the added pleasure of knowing that the vast majority of these pathetic creatures would be reduced to nothing more than charred cinders before the year was out.
“Mirror, mirror in my hand” she muttered dreamily “who’s the cleverest girl in the land?”
Allowing the tensions of the day to wash away, she gazed into the glass as it moved from a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party who paid well for her silence, to the office of a Wall Street broker who she was considering destroying, and then on to the back of a young man bending over a bed, piling toiletries into a briefcase. She could not see enough of him to identify him, but as he stood up she saw a head of long, dirty blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Instantly, she leaned forward, waiting for him to turn around. Finally, he did.
“YOU. Bloody fucking hell, Jason Carpenter. What rock did you crawl out from under you vile little turd?” Jumping up from the desk she began pacing the floor, the mirror clutched tightly in one hand. “Goddamit, you’re supposed to be dead. How the hell have you managed to hide from me all these months?”
Morgana waved her hand across the mirror’s face, preventing it from moving on to another person in a different location. All of a sudden everything else became insignificant by comparison to Jason’s stubborn refusal to be dead and, the far more important question, was Merlin still alive, too? Her eyes fixed intently on Jason’s back as she waited to see something that would tell her where he was and whether the old man was there with him. When Jason finally turned away and moved across the room, another young man – a mere boy, really - came into focus. This one was black and he was arranging an assortment of odds and ends on another bed.
What is this? Have you suddenly become rich enough to hire a servant, Jason? What the hell is going on?
Beyond the fact that it was obviously a seedy hotel room, the space they were in revealed absolutely nothing about their location. It looked like any cheap hotel that might be anywhere from Brixton to Timbuktu. Realizing that it might be hours before Jason left the hotel and thereby provide her with a clue to his location, Morgana twisted the mirror slightly to the left and downward so she could peer over his shoulder as he rummaged through the contents of the battered briefcase. He picked up an American passport and slipped it into the rear pocket of his jeans before sorting out several airline tickets. Waggling one finger at the mirror she tried to maneuver close enough to read the locations and airport names listed on the tickets but Jason would not stand still long enough for her to make out the words. She finally realized some small gratification when Jason and the boy left their room and exited the hotel, revealing what appeared to be a Middle Eastern or North African town where ancient, crumbling adobe brick buildings were randomly mixed with more modern structures. By the time Jason and his companion stopped at a sidewalk café for breakfast she had come to the conclusion that they were somewhere in Africa, thanks to the heavy predominance of black faces in the street. But it was not until two agonizingly long hours later when they disembarked from the bus at Axum Airport that she finally knew where they were.
“Ethiopia. What are you doing in Ethiopia? And why? And is that horrid old man dead, or not?”
None of the questions were answerable until Jason and his companion disembarked from their plane in Addis Ababa and made their way to yet another down-at-the-heels hotel that sported a faded sign over the front door proudly proclaiming it to be the Hotel New York. Once Jason checked in and made his way to his room she knew exactly where he was staying and, as a result, she knew how to get to him. The big questions now were: how long would he stay put before moving on, and where would he go when he did? Obviously time was of the essence. Morgana waved one delicately manicured hand across the face of the mirror, causing the image to blur and fade. Laying the scrying glass aside she picked up a cheap, untraceable mobile phone and punched in a number.
“Yes, yes, Allahu akbar to you too, Abu…Yes it is and I want to know if you and the Somali Front for Righteousness are still as anxious to get your grubby hands on those FIM-92 stinger missiles as you were last month but didn’t seem to have the money to pay for?...That’s quite alright; this deal won’t cost you a thing. I just need to you to do me a little favor. There is a young American man named Jason Carpenter staying in Addis Ababa and I have a few questions I’d like to ask him, so I thought that with you being right next door you wouldn’t mind kidnapping him and asking him politely on my behalf. No, no,
you just snatch him, get him across the border to someplace safe in Somalia and then ring me back; I’ll tell you what information I need and when I have it I’ll send you the missiles…Sorry, what was that again?...Oh, not at all, I have them safe and sound in Zimbabwe so they can be in your hands in a few days…What was that?...Well, it’s very thoughtful of you to ask but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.. Once I have the information I need, you can eat him for all I care…Good…You can find him in room 216 of the Hotel New York in Addis Ababa…That’s right. Oh, and there is just one more thing, Abu. I don’t know how long he’s going to be there so you have to grab him tonight. No, that’s not ok. Tonight or no missiles, do you understand? Good, then we have a deal.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added “Oh, Abu, if you bollox this up I promise I will hunt you down, slit the throats of you and your entire family and bury the lot of you face down next to hog carcasses and you will never get your seventy-two stinking virgins. Have I made myself perfectly clear?...Good. Now you have a nice day and call me as soon as you get my boy safely to your camp.”
* * *
Walking back to the hotel with Jason, Ras rubbed his stomach with one hand and screwed his face into a painful grin.
“Don’t get me wrong, boss, I think it’s great, but I don’t know how you westerners eat the way you do. No wonder you all get so fat.”
Jason scowled in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we hardly get done with breakfast and now we have lunch.”
“Ras, breakfast was seven hours ago and it was just coffee and bread.” Then, after looking down at his ironing board-flat stomach, “And I’m not fat.”
“Hey, what we had for breakfast is as much as I have most days. On a really good day I maybe get to eat twice, you eat three times every single day. And believe me, if you keep eating like that you’ll be the size of Egypt before you turn fifty.” Then, after a prolonged pause, he added “But thanks anyway. It was really good. I’ve always wanted to go to a McDonalds, I just never had the money.”