The Sinai Secret (20 page)

"Francis! It's your favorite heretic!"

Pause.

"Lang?"

"You don't recognize my voice?"

"Of course I do," the priest snapped. "You're just not among the people I'd expect to be calling at seven in the morning,
ante lucem."

"Qui male odit lucem.
That's because it's noon here. Surely I didn't wake you up."

"Obviously not, since you called my office, not my cell phone, hopefully for some other purpose than to announce the time of day, wherever you are."

Lang was about to quote Virgil again until he noticed a young cherub-faced and uniformed nanny giving him an odd look over the long handlebars of the pram she was pushing. "It's all right, dearie. I always practice my Latin on the phone."

She retreated at a pace that might have exceeded the baby carriage's safety limits.

"What?" Francis said.
"Unis dementia..."

"...
Dementes efficit multos,"
Lang finished. "Insanity is catching. But I didn't call just to chat. I've got some questions about the Bible."

"You apostates always have questions about the Bible. That's why you're infidels," Francis said dryly.

It was an old and good-natured barb.

"The Ark," Lang began, "tell me about it."

"Noah's?"

"Of the Covenant."

The cockney-accented voice of the operator interrupted to request more coins.

"The Ark of the Covenant," Francis mused after the additional deposit was made. "Just what endeavor has sparked this interest?"

"I'll tell you about it when I get home. Do we know where it is?"

Francis snorted. "We pretty well know where it's not, Indiana Jones notwithstanding. That tale, as you recall, had it located in Africa. There are those who believe that Solomon gave it to his son by the Queen of Sheba, Menyelek, who took it to what's now Ethiopia. There's a sect of Ethiopian Jews who claim to have it."

"But you don't believe that."

"Just a minute." There was the sound of something being moved. Lang could visualize his friend dragging one of his biblical reference books to the center of his desk. "No. Solomon himself tells us he sat a place for the Ark in the Temple, One Kings eight: twenty-one. The Old Testament mentions it a number of times after Solomon, particularly its being hidden from Nebuchadnezzar when his Babylonians invaded. Then reference to it simply stops. Where it is now is anyone's guess. Some make a strong case the Templars found it under the temple in

Jerusalem and carried it back to Europe. There's something to that."

Lang shifted the receiver to the other ear. From his own experience he knew the former organization of religious knights had at least one biblical treasure. "Oh?"

"Chartres was one of the several Gothic cathedrals in France begun fairly close to one another in time, sixty years. Notre Dame, Chartres, Reims, Amiens. All associated with the Templars."

"So, the Ark might be in one of those?"

"Not so easy. All have been associated with the Templars. Where else but from the East could have come the knowledge to build something so spectacular? Flying buttresses, thinly ribbed vaulted ceilings towering hundreds of feet high. The world, or at least the Western world, had never seen anything like it. For that matter, no one at the time had the skill to do that sort of building."

"I don't take your point." Lang was getting uncomfortable. Standing at a pay phone was not conducive to changing to more relaxed positions.

"Perhaps I'm straying a bit,
celeritas."

"Promptness would be appreciated. Truth is, Francis, I'm standing out on a public street."

"But why would you ...? Oh, I get it. Anyway, all of these Gothic cathedrals are associated in one way or another with the Templars: the skills, the knowledge, whatever. Most important, no one had a clue as to how to build what, by the standards of the day, must have seemed to defy gravity. That power had to come from somewhere. This becomes significant when you consider Chartres has the last known contemporary reference to the Ark."

Lang forgot his physical discomfort. "And that
is...?"

"On a north column there's a small stone carving showing the Ark being moved. Underneath is a Latin inscription,
Hie amittitur archa fedris."

Lang ran a hand across his face, unconscious of the gesture. "I'm not sure I know what that means. Something about something being let go or sent. Must be some sort of medieval corruption of the language."

"That, plus centuries of accumulation of grime, erosion from the weather, and perhaps help from French revolutionaries chipping away at the words. I'd put it at, 'Here the Ark is sent forth or yielded up.'"

"Sent to where?"

"That, my friend, is the problem. To Scotland when the Templars perhaps fled there? To the Languedoc region of France when it was a Templar stronghold?"

Lang turned around, looking for anyone showing an interest in him. He was well familiar with the Languedoc and its connection to the medieval monastic order of Templars. Too familiar. "Okay, so much for the Ark. Do you know anything about a sort of powder connected with it somehow, a very peculiar white powder that melts into a strange, almost self-illuminating glass?"

There was a pause.

"Funny you should ask right after we spoke of Gothic cathedrals. If you look at the few parts of the stained- glass windows original to those places, sections that haven't fallen out or been destroyed by wars over the centuries, you'll see what's called 'Gothic glass,' a sort of iridescent glass in which every color seems to glow. It was made during the hundred years or so after the cathedrals were begun; then it disappeared. The process for making it seems to have disappeared also. One wonders if that beautiful glass was the same as mentioned in Revelations."

"Glass in Revelations?"

"Just
a...
Ah! Here it is: 'And the city was pure gold like unto clear glass....' Revelations twenty-one: eighteen. Frequently the Book of Revelations is difficult to comprehend."

Gold like unto glass. The writer of the last book in the Bible understood something Dr. Werbel at Georgia Tech did not. Neither did Lang. The two, glass and gold, had been connected in antiquity. But how?

"Lang? Lang? You still there?"

Francis's voice brought his attention back to the conversation. "Does Revelations mention the Ark?"

"Not that I know of. As I said, references stop fairly abruptly about the time of the Babylonian invasion. What's this all about?" Francis asked. "I don't for a minute think a heathen like you has suddenly become interested in the Bible preparatory to seeing the truth."

"I'll tell you when I get home," Lang promised and hung up.

He could imagine his friend's frustration at having his mind picked and not being told why. But then, weren't Christians taught to forgive?

TWENTY-EIGHT

Hotel Stafford

St. James

London

An Hour Later

The telltale was missing.

Either the hotel's housekeeping staff had already made its daily visit or Lang had an uninvited visitor. He stepped back from the door and reached behind his back to grip the butt of the SIG Sauer as though to make certain it had not somehow escaped.

This was one of those situations that simply had no safe solution. If anyone were in the room, the sound of the key in the lock would give them all the advance warning needed. Kicking in the door and entering with gun blazing worked great in action films but left a lot to explain, particularly if the room turned out to be empty. Besides, real doors tended to be somewhat less destruction-prone than the plywood of the movies.

He took his cell phone from his pocket. Reading the number from his room key, he called the hotel, requesting that room service deliver an early lunch. With the aplomb of the better British hotels, no one inquired why he was using an outside line to make such a request.

Lang backed down the short hall and waited, watching the door to his room.

Within fifteen minutes a liveried waiter was balancing a tray as he hurried from the opposite end of the hall.

Lang waited until he knocked, announcing himself as room service. By the time he was knocking again Lang was beside him, key in the lock and his other hand again resting on the concealed weapon. Arguably, any occupant of the room would not realize Lang had returned.

Gently pushing the young waiter aside from a potential line of fire, Lang eased the door open.

The room was empty.

The maid had not yet been there.

Lang took the linen-draped tray, thanked the lad, and handed him a five-pound note.

The lunch was typically British: attractively cut, nicely served, and without an iota of taste or flavor. Who but the English would put butter on a ham sandwich? As he munched what was at least fresh bread, Lang tried to remember exactly where he had placed things: Was his shave kit exactly where he had left it? Were the shirts in the dresser in the same order?

He stopped, staring at an upholstered chair. The chintz of the seat didn't match the back. He stepped to the chair, removed the cushion, and gave it a ninety-degree turn so its design was now aligned with the back. He was certain he would have noticed the aberrant pattern.

Whoever "they" were, they had found him.

But how?

And exactly what were they looking for?

He had paid cash on arrival, only slightly raising the eyebrows of a front-desk crew well adjusted to the idiosyncratic behavior of the hotel's guests. Perhaps an unspotted
tail. Or...

The thought made him uncomfortable. This hotel had been his choice, what, three or four times in the last several years? In the past he had paid with the foundation's credit card. If someone's computer had traced that card number, it would have revealed where he stayed when in London.

Like it or not, the Information Age was privacy's funeral notice no matter how many people were fruitlessly trying to revive the corpse, an effort not unlike unscrambling an egg.

In fifteen minutes Lang was on the street, suitcase rattling along behind him like some dutiful animal. He visited a number of shops before reaching the block occupied by Fortnum & Mason. He entered, took an elevator as far as it went, took another halfway down, and walked the rest of the way to street level, exiting opposite where he had entered and hailing a roaming cab.

In London, as in most large cities, the traffic made it difficult to spot a following vehicle.

Lang directed the taxi to Knightsbridge in Kensington and from there to the Marble Arch Hotel. He was not surprised there was no doorman to greet him. Inside a lobby that was as dreary as the exterior, he waited while a platoon of Japanese tourists formed ranks behind their leader and sallied forth into the world of the
gaijin,
snapping pictures at every step.

A tired clerk took Lang's money in exchange for a key and explained that, on a cash basis, all room service requests would have to be paid for upon delivery. He made no offer to have someone show Lang to his room, nor was he ashamed to explain that there would be no refund were Lang to vacate before the next morning.