Ark of Fire (32 page)

“St. Lawrence the Martyr Church!” they exclaimed in unison, grinning at each other.

“According to the Old Testament accounts,” Caedmon excitedly continued, underlining the last line of the quatrain with his finger, “when the Ark of the Covenant was placed inside Solomon’s Temple, in the Holy of Holies, a veil was placed over the entrance to prevent direct access to that most sacred of holy relics. The expression ‘beyond the veil’ was thus coined because no one, not even the priests of the temple, could enter the sacred space.”

“Which means that the last line is a direct reference to the Ark.” When he nodded, she switched gears entirely. “Okay, when do we leave?”

“We don’t have a coach schedule handy. However, I suspect we can be in Godmersham by early afternoon. Sooner if we secure an auto hire.”

“Gee, I’m surprised that you don’t want to leave tonight. It’s only pouring down rain out there,” she teased.

“Though I refuse to entertain the notion that MacFarlane may yet steal the prize, we need our rest.”

On that point they were in complete agreement.

“Do you think the church is still standing?”

“Mmmm. Difficult to say. There were any number of churches and monasteries that were destroyed during the various wars of religion that raged for centuries across our little island kingdom. Tomorrow will be soon enough to ascertain if St. Lawrence the Martyr is intact.”

“Even if it’s still a going concern, we have no idea
where
on the church grounds the Ark is hidden.”

“I never said this would be an easy venture.” Scooting back his chair, Caedmon rose to his feet. As he walked over to the divided bed, one of Bach’s melancholy cello suites droned from the radio. Edie thought it sounded like a slow-moving funerary march.

Ignoring the music, she surreptitiously watched as Caedmon snatched a cookie tin off the bedside table.

No doubt about it, Caedmon Aisquith was very much his own man, his quirky intellectualism strangely appealing.

When he headed back to the oriel, tin in hand, Edie could see that something was wrong; his expression was not nearly as ebullient as it had been seconds before.

“Uh-oh. What happened? You’re no longer in a John Philip Sousa mood.”

Caedmon handed her the tin of chocolate-covered cookies. “Here, tuck in.”

“You’re not going to have one?”

Waving away the cookie tin, he reseated himself at the table. “Something about the solution is too neat and tidy. Too bloody obvious.”

“Maybe Galen wanted the solution to be obvious.”

“Had that been his intention, he would never have gone to the trouble of writing the quatrains.”

Her sweet tooth having also gone south, she shoved the tin aside.

“Yeah, I see your point.” Bummed, she stared at the handwritten quatrain. “Maybe a not-so-neat solution will come to you in the morning.”

“Or to you. Your chain-of-custody box showed a marked proclivity for analytical reasoning.”

Her mood percolating a teensy bit, Edie smiled. “You liked that, huh?”

“It’s one of many things that I like about you.”

Caedmon’s reply made her instantly regret the parting of the red bed.

“Well, what do you know? I like you too.”

A great deal, in fact. Maybe more than she should, given that she knew so little about him. Other than the fact that he once attended Oxford, had worked for MI5, and recently wrote a book, she knew nothing about Caedmon Aisquith. A man of mystery was one thing. A man without a past was something else entirely.

But then, she’d not been very forthcoming herself.

“Caedmon, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she blurted without preamble.

His blue eyes locked onto hers.

Edie took a deep breath, bracing herself for the backlash.

“I lied to you.”

“Nothing here but a bunch of old bones.”

At hearing that, Stan MacFarlane shone his Maglite into the exhumed grave where his aide-de-camp stood chest deep. Scattered at Braxton’s booted feet were the mortal remains of Galen of Godmersham. And a whole lot of mud, the grave quickly filling with water. Earlier, the night sky had opened up, the rain coming down in horizontal sheets.

Stan next shone his flashlight into the face of the Harvard scholar, who stood shivering on the other side of the grave, the light beam casting a golden hue onto the driving rain.

“You told me it would be here.”

“Based on the quatrains, I thought there was a likely possibility that the gold chest would be found in Galen’s grave.” His paid medieval expert, beginning to look like a wet rat, shrugged. “What can I say? We played the odds and lost.”

“Could you have misinterpreted the quatrains?”

The scholar rubbed the back of his neck. “Hmm . . . it’s possible, but . . . I really thought I correctly deciphered the verses. That’s the tricky thing about Middle English, it’s all about layered meaning. Hey, do you guys mind if I sit inside the Range Rover? I’m gonna catch my death if I stand out here much longer.”

Tuning out the other man’s whiny-ass complaints, Stan carefully considered his next move, knowing it was a move twenty-five years in the making. For it was twenty-five years ago that the archangels Michael and Gabriel had appeared to him soon after the blast in Beirut. Sent by God to pull him from the rubble.

The terror attack on the Marine barracks had been the first of the signs that the End Times were near.

Saved in body, and, more important, in spirit, he gave his life over to God’s work. Not once had he shirked his duty, commissioned with the task of building God’s holy army here on earth. What began as an informal prayer group in the first Gulf War had become a twenty-thousand-strong faith-based movement by the time the tanks rolled into Baghdad eleven years later.

Twenty-five years had come and gone, yet his mission was still incomplete.

God had something great and glorious intended for him.

But
only
if he uncovered the Ark.

The Ark was the key that would unlock the gates of the Millennial Kingdom.

The Ark was the weapon that would destroy the Muslim infidels.

Just as it had destroyed the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites.

“You know, I’m as stumped as you,” the scholar droned, interrupting Stan’s train of thought.

His attention snagged, Stan realized that the sentiment just expressed didn’t ring true; the other man was too pat. Too well-rehearsed.

As though it were a gun aimed at point-blank range, Stan shone the Maglite at the scrawny man’s face. Pupils quickly contracted into shiny black dots. “Why do I suddenly not believe you?”

“You’re kidding, right?” The other man affected a theatrical look of stunned disbelief. “What reason would I have to lie? I need the cash to pay off my student loans.”

“I can think of any number of reasons why you might lie to me.” Stan continued to shine the light at the other man’s face, as though he were boring a hole right through the middle of his forehead.

“Look, I thought for certain the Ark would be—I mean, the gold chest would be buried with Galen.”

“What did you just say?” The beam of light drilled that much deeper.

“
Arca
. I said
arca
. As in ‘Arca and gold ful shene he carried to the toun he was born.’ Remember the third quatrain?”

The truth revealed, Stan stared at the scholar, contempt washing over him in undulating waves.

Sensing that the winds had suddenly shifted, the Harvard scholar nervously glanced at the parked Range Rover. No doubt trying to remember if the keys had been left in the ignition.

“You can’t outrun a bullet,” Boyd Braxton jeered, having climbed out of the exhumed grave.

Judge and jury, Stan pointed an accusing finger. “ ‘And then shall the wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.’ ”

Surprisingly belligerent, the other man pointed a finger right back at him. “You’re a fucking lunatic, that’s what you are!”

“Unkind words for the man who holds your fate in his hands.”

The Harvard scholar glanced at the Israeli-made Desert Eagle negligently held in the gunnery sergeant’s right hand, belligerence now replaced with fear. Cowardly, sniveling fear.

“You’re right, dude. Heat of the moment. Sorry. And just to prove that I’m still part of the team, I think I know where the Ark is hidden.” The scholar jutted his chin toward the small church nestled on the other side of the cemetery. “When you guys did your earlier security check in the church, I caught sight of a very large marble plaque depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence.” Spreading his arms, the other man indicated an expanse of some four feet. “I’m guessing that if we pry that mother off the wall, we’ll find the Ark hidden behind it.”

“Pray that we do.”

“Back in D.C.,” Edie clarified, not wanting Caedmon to think that she’d recently lied to him.

“That would certainly explain the embarrassed blush you wear.”

“Actually, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not the least bit embarrassed that I lied. I’m thoroughly ashamed.” And, as he undoubtedly knew, shame was embarrassment on steroids.

“Did you lie about Padge’s murder?”

“What!” Edie vehemently shook her head, the image of Dr. Padgham’s sprawled, lifeless body flashing across her mind’s eye. “No, of course not. I lied about my, um, family background.”

Crossing his legs at the knee, Caedmon sat silent, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. If he was upset or disappointed by the fact that he’d been lied to, he gave no indication of it.

“Remember how I told you that my parents were killed in a boating accident off the coast of Florida? Well, that story was . . . well, it was a flat-out lie. I can’t speak for my father, but my mother never stepped foot in anything that ever floated on the water.”

She snatched a mandarin orange from the bowl on the table. Hands shaking, she began to peel the piece of fruit, if for no other reason than to give her suddenly sweaty fingers something to do. God, she felt lousy.

Unbelievably, she’d just told Caedmon Aisquith more about her childhood than she’d ever told another living soul.

“Did you tell the lie to elicit my sympathy?”

Edie stopped peeling.

“No! Absolutely not!”

Knowing why she told the lie, but not altogether certain why she suddenly wanted to tell the truth, Edie abandoned the orange and got up from the table.

Maybe she was sick and tired of going to bed with men under false pretenses.

Slowly, trying to collect her thoughts, she paced back and forth in front of the divided twin mattresses. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Caedmon finishing off the last dregs of his port wine.

She stopped pacing. Turning toward him, she said, “Were they still alive, there’s not a single member of my family that I would be proud to introduce to you. I just . . . I just wanted a normal, sane, loving family. Was I so wrong in wanting that?”

Caedmon shook his head. “It is what we all long for.” “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But those weren’t the cards I was given.” Realizing how canned and melodramatic that sounded, she decided to just stick to the facts. No emotion. No drama-queen theatrics.

“Okay, here it is. The unedited version of the story is that my mother, Melissa, was addicted to heroin, and bad men, and playing the state lottery. And just so you don’t jump to the conclusion that she was a horrible person, it wasn’t completely her fault. She grew up in a very repressive fundamentalist household. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a Jewish boy in her geometry class. Pops didn’t approve. So he kicked her out of the house. She was sixteen years old.”

“I take it the ill-fated lover is your father?”