Pryce was wrapping up the morning press conference when Silas and Celeste arrived at the Western Wall Plaza. He was flanked by the same Rabbi and Imam from the earlier one a few days ago. Security was tight, with the Israeli Defense Force out in full checking all baggage and instituting wanding procedures for every entrant, even on the other side of mobile, metal-detector units. It was also a strict off-limits zone for anyone other than those with proper credentials.
Lucky for them, they had all-access passes.
Silas half expected them to be rejected when they were scanned after the stunt he pulled the night before. But they worked, and they were waved through to join the rest of the high-profile visitors and dignitaries to witness history being made.
The two weaved their way through a gauntlet of media, keeping their heads down and trying to avoid the cameras. The last thing either of them needed was to be filmed, given the nature of their work with SEPIO. Especially his own work as a professor at Princeton. He doubted McIntyre or the rest of the tenure board would be all that understanding. Or forgiving.
“Oh no,” Celeste said, pulling at his arm. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
Oliver Tulu was heading toward them, bearing a clipboard and a look of irritation and indignation they had come to expect.
“Professor Grey, Ms. Bourne. Professor Pryce asked that I keep a look out for you two. He asked that I bring you to him personally, as he didn’t want you getting lost on your way to the unveiling.”
How nice of him.
Silas smiled. “Why that’s very kind of the good doc. But I think we can manage.”
He went to continue walking, but Tulu stepped in his path, a gleaming set of white teeth telling him to halt. “Please, I insist. If you would just come this way.” He motioned toward the familiar staging area of canvas tents.”
Silas looked at Celeste for confirmation. She nodded. He bowed his head at Tulu, and the man led them out of the crowded plaza and brought them into the climate-controlled tent of Pryce's personal study. He was hovering over his work table along with three others, a cloud of smoke hovering above.
“Professor,” Tulu said. “Dr. Grey and Ms. Bourne have arrived.”
Pryce spun around puffing a long, fat cigar. “Splendid!” he exclaimed holding out his hand. “Grey, are you ready for a front row seat to the forging of history?”
Any negative feelings from the previous night seemed to have dissipated, probably brought on by the euphoria of his impending, archaeological achievement. Silas smiled and shook the man’s hand, saying, “Well, done. Seriously. Well done.”
The man offered a wide grin, then took another few puffs of the cigar sticking out between his teeth. He spun back to his table, addressing a schematic of what looked like a series of tunnels under what Silas could only assume was the Temple Mount.
“Roland, here, my chief engineer, has told me we have encountered a slight setback for the morning. Apparently, there was a minor collapse, here," he said pointing at the schematics, "at this juncture leading toward the chamber entrance. Nothing to fret about, however. To be expected with the age of the tunnel and the amount of build on top. But we will need to sit tight a little longer before we can move forward while his men work. Feel free to make yourself at home while we wait. There's coffee over in the corner. But I do need you to stay here, inside the tent. We really can't have you traipsing all over the site today, given the media presence and sectarian frenzy, not to mention the work my team is undergoing to bring us to the finish line. I'm sure you understand.”
The two nodded and excused themselves to grab some coffee while Roland and his men left to clear away the rubble and Pryce finished his own preparations.
It wasn't until an hour later that Roland returned. It looked like good news because Pryce slapped the man on his back and made a fist of victory. The two walked over from their chairs.
“Good news?” Silas asked.
“Good to go! We’re going in now, assembling over at the Wilson’s Arch entrance and will be embarking on the journey toward the entrance in the next ten minutes. Meet us there as I assemble the rest of the team.”
“Here we go,” Celeste said quietly as they walked toward the tunnel entrance.
Several minutes later, Pryce came rushing over with an entourage of staff and religious officials from both Judaism and Islam to mark the historic occasion. A camera crew with BBC was also on hand to film the momentous event.
Pryce said a few words marking the occasion, and then he led them forward. Silas and Celeste had positioned themselves near Pryce at the front so they could follow closely behind. They wanted to be sure they’d be some of the first inside the chamber once it was opened to view the ancient relics.
Orange lights embedded in the floor guided their way through the main public tunnel. It was cool and dry, having been sealed and climate-controlled for years. The hum of generators was fed by cables running the length of the ceiling, which Pryce seemed to be following as he quickly led the team forward. They came to their first juncture, a rough-hewn square hole cut into the wall large enough for a single person to fit through. Silas assumed this had been the sealed section of the Warren Gate originally excavated in the ‘80s.
One by one, the group of eager on-lookers filed through the small opening into a large passageway that smelled like his childhood basement, carrying forward for another thirty meters. This section was taller and narrower than the Wilson’s Arch tunnel, having acted as the subterranean passageway the anointed Jewish priests had used to transport the necessary cultic material for their sacred rituals deep inside Solomon’s Temple.
Silas’s heart began to gallop faster at the thought. A smile curled upward as he considered the reality that he was walking the same path countless Levites had walked bearing the sacrificial goats and bulls and sheep that would make atonement for the sins of the people.
That is until that fateful day in April, 33 AD when the final Sacrifice made atonement for the sins of the people once and for all. A favorite passage from the book of Hebrews raced through his mind:
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”
And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Silas’s excitement for laying eyes on the ancient Ark relic was tempered by the realization that the cross made it completely moot. The object of wood and gold was no longer the channel for God’s presence, redemption, and mediation. All of that was accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ on the butcher’s block of the Roman cross.
As they continued forward, he meditated upon the meaning of this once-for-all sacrifice in light of the Ark. Jesus was God-made-flesh; the very presence of God himself walked around on the earth. He understands our life because he lived our life. Jesus was the Great High Priest because he offered his very self as the ultimate, final sacrifice upon those boards of execution; the cross was the altar, his broken body and shed blood the sacrifice. He paid our price in our place, paving the way for our forgiveness from sins and making peace with God. And as the exalted King who gave himself as a ransom payment to the Father, Jesus is the one mediator between God and man, interceding on our behalf.
So Silas knew that even if they discovered the Ark on the other side of those chamber doors—when they discovered the Ark on the other side of those chamber doors—it didn't matter anyway. At this point, it was a fascinating religious relic from ages past. A significant piece of history, no doubt, but no longer a channel of religious ritual or spiritual significance.
Although he did wonder what it might mean for the Christian faith if Judaism regained its central religious icon. How would that affect the Christian claim that the cross was all-sufficient to take away the sins of the world and make people perfect if God's former sacrificial altar was resurrected? What would its discovery mean for the claim, as Hebrews says, that Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice for people's sins? That sacrifices were no longer needed—that the Ark itself was no longer needed?
Silas guessed they were about to find out.
Several men in bright yellow hard hats and boots had congregated up ahead, presumably the site of the minor collapse from the morning. Stone and piles of sand lay on either side of the floor, along with orange caution cones.
“Watch your steps, please,” Pryce advised, his Southern-accented voice trembling from excitement. “It's just a little way farther.” He hustled along faster, and before Silas and Celeste could contemplate where they were, the door appeared. It was just as Pryce had described, but more majestic than Silas could have anticipated.
The sealed burnished bronze doors stood firm, guarding their secrets behind an intricate design of vines and images depicting the sacrificial practices of Israel that provided redemption and reconciliation between them and Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Silas chanced walking up to the doors. He pressed both palms on them, their sacred coolness sending a jolt of electric excitement through his arms and down his spine. A drunken giggle escaped him, and he turned in embarrassment to Pryce who was standing at his right looking slightly annoyed. He looked behind him, finding the cohort of people staring at him. He blushed and stood back against the passage wall.
Pryce cleared his throat. “Thank you all for being here. And a big thanks to Rabbi Amar and Imam Hussein for their efforts in making this momentous discovery possible.” He turned to Silas and grinned slightly. “And thank you, too, Dr. Grey, for pointing me in the right direction those years ago.”
Silas was surprised by the acknowledgment. He felt his neck grow warm with embarrassment, but he nodded his thanks.
“I had a speech all prepared, but how about we skip the pleasantries and open the cotton pickin’ thing!” The crowd chuckled approvingly.
He motioned toward two men in hard hats. One of them was holding a hydraulic prying machine. There were no handles nor any obvious way to open the doors, presumably having been sealed shut by some secure, secretive means. The two men carefully positioned the device in the sealed crack where the massive, heavy bronze doors met, then switched it to life. An air compressor sprang to life near Silas, enabling the jaws to begin their work.
At first, nothing happened. The compressor hummed away while the jaws didn't move. They seemed to have difficulty finding purchase. The men adjusted the position of the hydraulic device, moving it this way and that. This lasted for several minutes, frustration and concern registering on Pryce's face.
But then an ache escaped from the doors as the hinges began to give. A cheer erupted from the crowd, and Silas couldn’t help but join in. Celeste squeezed his arm and smiled.
This was it.
The chamber entrance sighed from the sudden pressure differential after being sealed shut for centuries as the hydraulic jaws slowly cracked open the door panels a few inches. Which ratcheted up the crowd’s enthusiasm even further. Silas was close enough to catch a whiff of the acrid air escaping the widening doors, smelling like the floor of a deep forest ravine filled with rot and musk and condensation and dirt. Silas strained to look around the working men trying to catch a glimpse of the inside, but it was still too dark to see anything.
The men stopped their work and switched to manually opening the chamber entrance, carefully tugging on the ancient doors. Pryce joined in, as well, a satisfying smile beaming across his face as he helped uncover the hidden Ark of the Covenant. The passageway was completely silent now, but for the faint protest of the doors' hinges. But soon enough the chamber was completely exposed.
Silas could feel his heart beating in his ears now, its pace matched by his heaving lungs. The feeling coursing through him was just as it was the first time he had experienced the thrill of a monumental archaeological find. Like at Tell-es Sultan when he discovered the original Ark scrolls. In the military, he had been drunk off his butt more times than he cared to admit, especially before he had become a Christian. But finding those scrolls was 100 proof better. A drug addict’s high, really.
That archaeological ecstasy was nearing its climax as the huddled mass inside the Warren’s Gate passageway stood at the precipice of the Temple treasures chamber where the Ark rested, waiting to be unveiled for all the world to see after all these years.
He strained again to catch a glimpse of the inside, the passageway light now illuminating the interior even more.
“Does it look to you that another level dips beneath this one?” Celeste whispered.
Silas nodded, standing on his tip-toes and continuing to crane his head ahead. “It does. And the chamber looks large. Large enough to accommodate the ritualistic artifacts of the Temple’s inner chamber.”
Nothing was visible beyond the threshold of the chamber, which meant the Temple treasures were probably hiding securely below the entrance level.
He smiled at her. She returned the grin, intoxicated by the nearness of the unveiling.
Pryce smiled at the crowd of onlookers and rubbed his hands as if he didn't know what to do.
“Shall we?” he finally said. He hesitated, seemingly apprehensive of what next to do. Then he stepped into the darkness.
Following closely behind him were the two workmen armed with LED headlamps and flashlights. Silas and Celeste squeezed themselves forward into the chamber entrance, edging past the rabbi and imam. Silas greedily took one of the flashlights from a workman and lunged forward to Pryce’s side.
The chamber was indeed split between two levels, measuring the size of a high school gymnasium. Two wide stairways sat at either side of the threshold platform. What looked like large wood torches still stood at the top and base of each set of stairs, complete with charred carbon ends, their fires having flickered out after the chamber had been sealed shut.
As others filed in behind him, their murmurs echoing around the ancient space, Silas quickly shined his LED light in the well of the chamber.
All he saw was an empty void of all-consuming blackness.
He held his breath, ears ringing with the pulse of his blood.
It can’t be…
Empty?
No golden altar of incense. No table of shewbread. No lampstands of pure gold.
And definitely no Ark of the Covenant.
The murmurs grew louder, more confused. More indignant.
He looked at Celeste, whose face expressed the same what-on-earth dumbfoundedness everyone else was beginning to verbalize.
“This isn’t right,” she said.
He agreed.
He swung his lamp toward Pryce, eager to read his face.
Where he expected to find utter surprise and dismay, there was instead what appeared to be a moment of met expectations, relief even.
Then, with the flip of a switch, he seemed to turn on a performance of shock and disappointment and humiliation.
Did Lucas Pryce know the chamber was empty?
That the Ark of the Covenant wasn’t underneath the Temple Mount?
That it had never even been there?
All along?