Ark (10 page)

“They never let go,” said Jim, nodding. “I guess that’s it. Game over.” He looked up at the ceiling and slumped back in his chair. “Balls.”

Lou turned and picked up his pen. “I’m sorry it worked out this way, Jim, but you know what I always say?”

“Screw ’em?”

“No.” said Lou. “More like, ‘they’ll screw you whether you’re standing up or sitting down.’”

That forced a laugh out of Jim. “I never heard that one.”

“Brand new,” said Lou. “Not bad, huh?”

“Needs work,” said Jim, offering an appreciative smile. As they both got back to work Jim began to realize that Lou might have be right. “Fine. Let the military deal with it,” he thought.

The phone rang. To Jim’s surprise it was Gene, calling from a hotel in Albuquerque. Gene was laughing when Jim answered. “Hey, Jim, what’s up? John says you called him at his Dad’s office. Is there a problem?”

“I don’t know, Gene,” replied Jim cautiously. “Was John angry?”

“Well, I guess puzzled is more like it,” said Gene. “How did you get that number?”

“Tell you what,” said Jim. “An answer for an answer. First me. What are you doing in New Mexico?”

“That’s a bit of a story,” said Gene.

“I’ll bet,” said Jim.

“The skinny is that John’s Dad got involved when he heard about the plans,” Gene explained.

“Involved? How involved?”

“So how did you get the number?” asked Gene.

“Well,” said Jim thoughtfully. “Sources.”

“Sources that have his father’s private military number?” Gene was silent for a few seconds. “Okay, Jim, what do you want?”

“I want to know what’s happening with the ark project, Gene,” said Jim, trying to maintain a friendly tone.

“John is close to his Dad, Jim,” said Gene. “They talk all the time. It’s not a big deal. He told his Dad about the project and his Dad, who’s pretty big stuff around here, offered the services of his staff at Sandia to help John get some answers.”

“Why not tell me?” asked Jim. He noticed Lou standing in the doorway between their studios, listening. He gave Lou the thumb’s up sign and Lou nodded.

Gene seemed surprisingly forthcoming. “What’s the point in dragging you down here?” he asked. “John didn’t want a whole herd of people down there. The place is big on security.”

“I know Sandia,” said Jim. “Applied for a job there a million years ago. Nukes all over the place.”

“Yeah,” said Gene, “I guess. John didn’t involve you in this because there’s no need. We’re getting data. That’s all.” What Gene was saying seemed to add up, but Jim was still uneasy about the military being involved. He said as much to Gene. “We were planning on filling you in if we got any data, Jim,” continued Gene, “and as far as my being here, I’m on vacation and John invited me to fly down. I’m going to rent a car tomorrow and visit the Grand Canyon.”

“Oh,” said Jim. “Have a good time. I wouldn’t mind seeing the canyon myself.”

After exchanging a few more pleasantries Jim hung up. Lou was still in the doorway. “Pussy,” said Lou. “Sounded to me like he walked all over you.”

“They’re not cutting me out. They’re just doing research.”

“The military is looking into this for you?” said Lou, grinning cynically. “God, Jim, are you buying that?”

“Well, what choice do I have?” said Jim, scratching his thinning brown hair.

“Just bag the whole thing. It stinks! Buy it if you want to, Jim. It’s your funeral.”

That afternoon John Wilcox called. His greeting was cordial and positive, but he seemed concerned that Jim had gotten the number at his father’s office. To protect Aaron’s job, Jim lied. “I had it written down somewhere. Maybe you gave it to me.”

“Not important,” said John. “Anyway, glad I have you on the line. I could look this up, I guess, but you might have the information at hand. How much gold and silver were used in the biblical construction of the ark?”

Jim was glad the folder where he kept his data about the ark was on his desk, neatly stacked next to his Graphis Annuals and his software disks. “I happen to have it right here, with my notes. Let’s see ... the total gold, by biblical measure, was 29 talents and 730 shekels. That equals 37,952 ounces of gold.”

“What’s a talent?” asked John, “and a shekel?”

“Internet sources said a talent was equal to seventy-five and a half pounds. A shekel, maybe four ounces. Gold is generally valued by the Troy ounce, so I figured everything in ounces.”

“Christ,” said John. “that’s a lot of gold.”

“Yeah. Add to that about 128,000 ounces of silver.”

“Silver,” said John. “Gene mentioned that. And bronze.”

“That’s right, John,” replied Jim, gaining confidence. “70 talents and 2400 shekels worth. We can’t ignore the bronze because that may have electrical properties, too.”

“Cost?” John asked dispassionately.

“Haven’t you priced this out before?” Jim thought John would be the first man to have that number.

“No,” said John Wilcox calmly. “I knew it was a lot.”

“Well,” said Jim, “don’t say this number in front of your accountant, but the cost of the gold and silver alone is in the $15 million ballpark. The actual number I got was $14,871,500, not counting the bronze, the acacia wood, and all the rest of the materials, plus labor. Maybe you could squeak by at 16.”

John Wilcox was quiet for a moment. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, Jim, you’ve done your homework. I’ll have to check it against the going rate when …” He stopped himself at that point.

“To do the drawings I had to do plenty of homework,” Jim offered, just to break the ensuing silence. “I think, if you’re going to do this right, you’ll need better expertise than mine. I got the numbers out of the standard library references and the web. If you’re starting a project you check the numbers first, right?”

“Am I getting a lecture here?” asked John, dryly.

“No charge for that, John.” Jim forced a fairly convincing chuckle.

John laughed. “I guess so,” he said. There was a pause. To Jim’s complete surprise, John said, “Tell you what, Jim. Is there a way you could make it out here this coming weekend?”

“To Sandia?” Jim stared at the floor, composing his thoughts. Suddenly he was not only back on the team, but might be an active player. As he considered plane fare, the time away from his clients’ projects, and leaving his family, his spirits dampened. “I want to come, John,” Jim said doubtfully, “but the money’s tight lately and I can only spare Saturday and Sunday. I’ll lose my accounts if I don’t get the work done.”

“Okay,” said John. “Back by Monday. I’ll have you flown out. Somebody will get back to you with info. Okay?”

Jim hung up and smiled, wondering if he had ever been out of the loop. Looking at his notes, he tried to picture all that precious metal in one place, under a tarp on a Humvee, rolling down some dusty road to nowhere; truckloads of acacia wood, linen, goat hair cloth and ‘fine scarlet stuff,’ whatever that was. As he stared at his notes he also realized that, with all the materials and labor, they were looking at a construction cost of more than he’d quoted. Maybe twenty million dollars?

“My God,” he muttered, “the government may be the only group with the resources to build this thing, after all.” Jim was glad at the prospect of seeing his questions answered. He was also a realist, though, and he knew that once the military was involved and the power of the ark was revealed to them, everything would change.

Long ago, before all this business with the ark had started, Jim had regarded the Old Testament as an ancient curio, an outdated and irrelevant relic. Now he knew that the book of Exodus read almost like a diary, as if written by a biblical journalist. He’d heard all the popular renditions of the story in Sunday School, but many details were left out. Because he’d used the Bible like a technical manual, he knew the full story of the Ark of the Covenant. He’d never known, for example, that before the ark was ever built God revealed Himself in person to seventy elders at the foot of Mount Sinai. There was even a description of God himself, standing above a pool of turquoise, His body having a ‘clearness, like unto Heaven,’ whatever that meant. Now he knew there were thousands of Israelite witnesses to the events described in the book, not just a small group of desert tribesmen. These people weren’t easily convinced. The Bible made that perfectly clear. He pictured a vast enclave trudging aimlessly from oasis to oasis, mostly wondering where the next meal or drink of water would be found.

Jim understood now that the story of Moses was really about the Hebrew Law and how it had been forged into people’s hearts and souls. Unquestionably, the ark was central to all that. It communicated the Law and policed it. It was also a feared weapon in battle. Jim looked up and sighed deeply. “God will smite those who disobey,” he muttered softly. He was no biblical scholar, but he understood that the story with which he’d become so personally involved wasn’t just a manual for building ancient furniture. This was the story of the Prophet Moses, the cofounder of three major religions.

Years before, when he first investigated the ark, Jim had the idea that Eric Von Daniken might have been right when he asserted that the story of Moses was a tale of ancient astronauts, but he had abandoned that notion long ago. Reading the story had changed his mind. The ark wasn’t just a weapon that some space alien handed to Moses, as Von Daniken had claimed. It wasn’t like that at all. It was the living presence of God in their midst. “This is big,” he said aloud.

Now that he might actually witness the renewing of the ark, Jim found himself hovering between elation and fear. He might finally get the answers that had haunted him for so long, but what if those answers cost him his life?

#

On Thursday a woman from the military called to inform Jim she had reserved a ticket on a 7 a.m flight to Albuquerque, courtesy of John Wilcox. When the time came to go Lou drove him to the airport. He had promised to take on some of Jim’s work, but all the way to the airport Lou made sure that Jim wasn’t going to forget his obligations. He said at least three times, “I can’t run this business by myself.”

By eight that morning Jim was leaning over an airliner tray, eating a piece of overly crisp honeydew melon and a stamped-out blueberry muffin. He gazed down from his window seat at the greenish brown folds of the Allegheny Mountains. In the two seats next to him a husband and wife chatted with friends across the aisle. The drone of the engines was making him drowsy. Jim fell asleep.

He awoke to a large stuffed toy being dropped on his head. Jim opened his eyes to see a freckled gum snapping face an inch from his nose. “Sorry, mista,” said the kid.

As Jim righted his chair, the captain announced the crossing of the scenic Mississippi River. He looked out the window and yawned. He had slept a long time. He caught a glimpse of the river, but they were at a great height and the ground below all looked the same.

Clouds soon obscured the view and he opened his travel bag, taking out his notes and drawings. Staring at the sketch of the tabernacle Jim wondered if the drawing was accurate at all. What configurations had God and Moses discussed on the mountain? You can learn a LOT in forty days and nights on a mountain. He learned to drive in two weeks. He learned how to operate his computer in a week. He wondered how those untold instructions might have altered his drawing. The kid’s face loomed over him again. “Coooooooool,” said the boy. “What are thoooose? Can I COLOR them?”

“No,” answered Jim as politely as he could.

“Oh,” said the boy. He disappeared from view and remained in his seat for the remainder of the flight.

A limousine was waiting for Jim when he exited the terminal. He spotted the driver holding up a sign that said “Mr. Wilson.” The chauffeur greeted him as pleasantly as the warm air did his senses. “Call me Jimmy,” said the driver. “Welcome to Albuquerque, Mr. Wilson.”

“Is it always this warm in March?” Jim asked, stowing his bags in the opened trunk.

“Well, it’s kinda’ cool today, Mr. Wilson. Freezin’ back east, is it? You probably won’t need that jacket.”

“The plants back home seem happy enough, but people are still wearing topcoats, if that’s what you mean.”

“You want to take it off? I’ll stow it.”

Jim shook his head. “It’s leather. Not too hot in summer and keeps the wind away in winter. I wear it all the time. Are we going to the Sandia Base?”

“No, I’m taking you to Santa Fe, to Mr. Wilcox’s estate.”

The sky was nearly cloudless as they cruised along the expressway. The two Jims talked about anything but Jim’s reason for visiting. Jim expected the time-honored question to all travelers: ‘what brings you here?’ But it never came. Instead, Jimmy seemed more eager to hear about how the Philly teams were doing.

“Well, as usual, the Flyers are up to their ass in penalties, and it’s too early to say anything about the Phils. The season opener was only a few days ago.”

“Yeah,” the driver scoffed happily. “Dodgers kicked their ass.”

“Dodger fan?” asked Jim.

“Not really. Eagles fan,” said Jimmy. “I like football, myself. You?”

Jim had always been taken for a sports buff. He could never figure out why. Perhaps it was his size. His six foot three frame made folks assume this, he guessed. From his viewpoint, the only advantage to size was being able to see over the people’s heads in crowds. To him the disadvantages far outweighed the perks people presume goes with tall genes. The plane ride had certainly reinforced that notion. His joints were stiff from being cramped into his seat for the entire flight from Philly.

“I’ll bet you play basketball,” said Jimmy, almost on cue. “Whassup with the Owls?”

“Owls?” said Jim, drawing a blank.

“Temple Owls,” said Jimmy scornfully. “Led the league last year?”

“I hate basketball,” said Jim.

“Oh,” said the driver.

So ended the conversation and the macho camaraderie. Jim was content to sit quietly and watch, through tinted glass, as the dry New Mexico landscape silently rolled by. Sagebrush, scrub pines, and an occasional palm or Joshua tree suggested a Florida turned desert. In the distance the shadowy blue-gray mountains were an unmoving backdrop in spite of the car’s considerable speed. Fence posts whizzed by as Jim mused on having found a way to get Jimmy to step on it and get them to their destination faster. He was eager to stretch the final tenacious kinks from his frame.