Silas kept his eyes closed while pockets of atmospheric speed bumps jostled the plane as they crossed the expanse of water below. He hated flying, and boating for that matter. Anything that took his two legs off of God’s green earth. That’s why he had joined the Army, rather than the Air Force or Navy or Marines.
His father had said if God meant for man to fly he’d have given him wings. Had he meant for him to float across the water, he’d have given him gills.
Dad had a point. So he had followed in his footsteps after that fateful 9/11 day by signing up at the Army recruitment center, and later with the Rangers after an instructor pulled him aside because of his exceptional marks.
The small private jet dipped suddenly, then evened out and shuddered. He gripped his armrest tighter, then instinctively reached inside his coat pocket searching for a little, blue pill. He sighed when he came up empty, as well as at his weakness.
Here we go again, he thought, reminiscing about his mission with SEPIO in Paris earlier in the year. Back into the fray.
After the team had exited the Temple's passageway empty-handed, feeling utterly dejected and distraught and confused by the massive miscalculation, Silas and Celeste had quickly moved out of the way to watch the circus unfold from a distance as Pryce addressed a bank of news cameras from around the world on a makeshift platform, flanked on either side by the representatives of Judaism and Islam.
His remarks had been curt and clipped: “I regret to inform the watching world that we apparently made a rather large miscalculation, and of historic proportions. We did indeed discover a chamber beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple Mount. But it was empty.”
A murmur had rippled through the Western Wall Plaza, from the news anchors to the onlookers to even the cameramen.
Pryce had expressed utter shock and dismay at the absence of the Temple treasures, not least of all the still-missing Ark of the Covenant. It was a career low…a professional humiliation…a cultural and religious disappointment…a loss for the Abrahamic faiths…and on and on.
Then he had ended the presser by saying, “I want to thank Rabbi Amar and Imam Hussein for their wholehearted belief in offering the world the benefit of the Ark’s unveiling. We intend to regroup and double our efforts in the coming months to search for the hidden Ark of the Covenant for mutual religious edification and cultural appreciation. Thank you.”
With that, he had walked off and through the crowd into an awaiting Mercedes, which whisked him away to safe harbor.
It had been a shocking experience for Silas and Celeste, standing in the empty chamber beneath the Most Holy Place, all the anticipation and buildup, the expectation and hope all deflating in one fell swoop.
And yet it hadn’t been. After he had raided Pryce’s hotel room and discovered the notes and intel, there was a part of Silas that had a niggling suspicion that the chamber would be empty.
Because things were not as they had seemed.
And there he was, on yet another private jet chartered by the Order, off to another location of import to the Christian faith to get to the bottom of what had happened. More importantly: to get to the bottom of what Pryce was up to.
Not that he minded it. He was beginning to take a liking to the adventure that came from protecting, instructing, fighting for, watching over, and helping the Church heed the memory of the Christian faith—as the name of the Order’s Project SEPIO explicitly meant. It beat grading papers and the looks and the complaints from a bunch of half-interested, self-indulgent college students. Some students were a joy, particularly when they took an interest in exploring their faith and spirituality, and he could walk with them through that journey, like Jordan Peeler from earlier in the year. That was the highlight of his job, for sure. But they were few and far between.
He sighed. His college students. Princeton University. The tenure board. Doc McIntyre. In the excitement of it all with Pryce and the Ark, his mind had locked away what was waiting for him back home.
Perhaps that should tell him something. That the part of him devoted to life as a professor was fading, that it was time for something new. But how could he let go of an identity he had spent a decade carefully crafting, hammering, and honing to professional perfection? He was on the verge of being Princeton’s youngest tenured professor. That is if he could escape the wrath of McIntyre and make it through the gauntlet of Human Resource’s STEPs program. Was he willing to throw that away? And for what, working behind the scenes to secure ancient relics that nobody gave two rats patooties about anymore anyway?
Jude 3. The Scripture reference was crisp and clear in his mind’s eye.
Contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.
He smiled, remembering the day he had given his life to Jesus one evening at that military base in southern Iraq. It was memorable not so much because he had offered Christ his soul. But because he had pledged him his entire life, his entire self. The chaplain had led the soldiers in the small Christian meeting through the singing of an old hymn that beckoned as much. He recalled the words as he drifted through the stratosphere, singing them quietly in his mind:
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
He took a deep breath and sighed, smiling at the memory and humming quietly along. He silently meditated on the next several stanzas, reordering his hands, will, and love for the glory of God and the good of the world. Just as he had over ten years ago in the desert sands of Iraq.
For Silas, that moment's occasion when he passed over from death to life in coming to faith had included the offering of his intellect and will to Jesus, the product of his hands as well as his mind. So he had enrolled in graduate school to pursue historical theology, church history, and religious studies, vowing to do what Saint Jude, otherwise known as Saint Thaddeus, had urged him to do—using his classes and journal articles and conference presentations to contend for his faith.
Perhaps there was a calling to a more active role in contending for and preserving that faith. With the Order of Thaddeus, with SEPIO.
Celeste gently tapped him on his arm. He woke with a start and looked over at her.
She offered him a weak grin as she sat down next to him across the aisle. “Hello, sleepyhead. A few minutes to touchdown.”
He smiled and nodded, then brought his seat upright and put his tray table in position for the landing. He glanced out of his window and watched a sea of blue receding into a body of pale, bone-dry land as the sun began receding below the horizon. Where on earth had Radcliffe sent them?
“And, here. This is for you.” She handed him a large, brown shopping bag.
He turned toward her and raised an eyebrow in confusion as he took it. “What’s this?”
“Apparently, Radcliffe left it for you. Thought it was appropriate for this next leg of our adventure.”
He opened the mouth of the bag and looked inside. “What the…” he looked at her with a wry smile, then reached inside and brought out a deep-brown, leather fedora. He laughed and put it on, running his index finger and thumb around the brim as he fixed his gaze in a serious, Indiana Jones pose.
“Now, don’t you look smart, Dr. Grey?”
“Don’t you mean, Dr. Jones? And, what, no whip?” He looked back inside the bag, then folded it and set it next to him.
“I guess the Beretta will have to do.” She handed him his weapon of choice. He took it and shoved it in his waist. “Thanks. And remind me to thank the chief for the hat.” He buckled himself in and prepared for the landing.
She fastened her own buckle, and said, “Seems appropriate given our Ark escapades. Besides, it looks better on you than that other Yank, anyway.”
“I just hope it doesn’t mean we’re heading to Tanis, Egypt, or else we’re in a load of trouble!”
After the two had exited the Temple passageway and once they had cleared the Western Wall Plaza, Celeste had immediately dialed Radcliffe to inform him of the developments. Pryce had instructed the small group to embargo any communication until he had made a statement to the press, but she had ignored the protocol given the gravity of what had happened.
Radcliffe had been gobsmacked, but not entirely surprised, given the archaeological project's and Pryce's apparent connection to Nous. But that meant the stakes were even higher for the historical letdown. Something had happened to the Ark. And Nous was up to something. While the Order concerned itself with relics that contained the memory of the Christian faith, the Ark was a vital part of that memory, if only tangentially. SEPIO had work to do, which meant Silas and Celeste had work to do.
Without giving much detail, Radcliffe had ordered the pair to head straight for Ben Gurion Airport and board an awaiting SEPIO Gulfstream that would take them to their next destination. Something had checked out with the images Silas had captured, giving them one of their first and only leads: the encircled word Shishak. He didn’t want to get into it over the phone, given the turn of events and given Nous’s apparent involvement, and Zoe was still doing a work-up on their assignment brief. They would get the full scope of the mission once they landed, which was in about thirty seconds.
Silas closed his eyes and held his breath, the sensation of the small bird suspended between the ether and the earth, strumming a mean song on his gut before it landed with a bounce and came to an abrupt halt at the end of a runway under a cloudless evening sky nestled in the flat, bone-dry desert next to a stretch of lush greenery that snaked for miles in both directions. Outside his window, he could see a banner in the distance welcoming them to Luxor International Airport.
“Luxor?” Silas said, turning to Celeste with a twisted face. “As in Luxor, Egypt?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. And I guess Radcliffe made a good call on the fedora.”
He scoffed and turned back toward the window. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
After taxiing to a private hangar, they were met with a Land Rover, a set of keys, and an encrypted satphone. Silas took the keys and handed the satphone to Celeste. She dialed into SEPIO command under the Washington National Cathedral as Silas started the SUV and began driving out of the hangar and into whatever it was Radcliffe had gotten them into.
“I trust you made it safely to the Gift of the Nile,” Radcliffe said through the SUV’s speakerphone. “And that you got my welcome gift, Silas.”
He turned to Celeste and smiled. “Yes, I did. Thanks, Radcliffe. I think. But please don’t tell me we’re about to reenact my favorite childhood flick. I hate snakes.”
“Not to worry, Doctor Jones.” Radcliffe snorted. “Sorry about that. I had visions of you shimmying up a sandstone pillar in that silly hat I gave you.” He sorted again, then continued, “Anyway, Tanis isn’t your destination. However, the Valley of the Kings is.”
Celeste punched Valley of the Kings into the Land Rover’s GPS system, then said, “Alright, give it to us, Radcliffe. What did you find?” They would arrive in less than an hour.
“It isn’t what I found, but what you found, Silas. And Zoe. I mentioned when you called in Jerusalem that one of the words you discovered was flagged as a match.”
“Shishak, right?” Silas said as he turned left onto route 75 out of the airport.
“Exactly, Shishak. As in, king of Egypt.”
“King Shishak?” Celeste asked turning to Silas. He shook his head and kept driving.
Radcliffe continued, “Also known as Shoshenq I, pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the twenty-second dynasty. Here, let me read it to you.” There was a rustling of pages as Radcliffe found his place in a book. “Listen to this, from 1 Kings chapter fourteen:
In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the king went to the Lord’s temple, the guards bore the shields, and afterward they returned them to the guardroom.
Silas whistled. “So this Shishak or Shoshenq, or whoever he was, is said to have carried off the temple treasures, and during the ninth-century BC after invading the southern kingdom of Judah, including the Ark of the Covenant. Do I have that right?”
“Indeed. After the death of Solomon, Israel divided into the two kingdoms. The Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south, containing Jerusalem. This southern kingdom was led by his son Rehoboam, and around 926 BC it was invaded by Shishak of the Egyptians, as I just read from 1 Kings. As the biblical text quite clearly states, the king came up and attacked, and then not only carted off the treasures of the royal household, but ‘carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord.’”
“Fascinating,” Celeste said. “And we can corroborate that the Ark of the Covenant itself was part of that treasure trove?”
“Not exactly,” Radcliffe replied. “However, the temple of Karnak in Luxor contains the pharaoh’s own account of his triumph over Jerusalem, and in it we learned that he offered the spoils of his campaign to the god Amun. What’s more is that in 1939, Shishak’s tomb was discovered in Tanis, and both Shishak’s sarcophagus and mummy were adorned with gold, presumably from the gold shields Solomon had made.”
“Or from the temple treasures,” Celeste added.
“Perhaps. But many scholars believe the account discovered in the temple of Karnak combined with the discoveries in Shishak’s tomb is evidence that the Ark was indeed brought to Egypt. Now, there are certainly detractors. Some have maintained that Shishak never entered Jerusalem, since it wasn’t among his own list of captured cities. Others believe those Temple treasures were merely the items stored in the treasury outside the Temple, not the sacred ones from the inner sanctuary.”
“Like the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“And then there’s 2 Chronicles 13:11 and 35:3,” Silas said as he turned onto the Luxor Bridge to Al Maris.
“Well, look at you,” she said, “all Bible Answerman, and all.”
He smirked. “Thanks.”
“So what does it say?”
“That the altar of incense, the menorah, and the table of showbread were still in use in the temple. And then Josiah directed the Levites to put the sacred Ark in the Temple that Solomon made. Which would seem to pose a problem for the theory.”
“Yes, except for the hidden room in the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun.”
“King Tut?” the two exclaimed in unison.
Silas took off his fedora and tossed it to Celeste, then said. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Not at all. There has been a resurgent interest in the pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty who lived four hundred years before Shishak and coincidentally restored Amun worship to the kingdom. As I mentioned, King Shishak apparently had presented the Temple treasures as an offering to the god in the temple just across the river from the good Tut’s tomb. And apparently scientists are investigating whether there are hidden chambers behind the walls of King Tut’s tomb.”
“I do seem to recall something about a radar specialist finding evidence for hidden doorways on the north and west walls,” Celeste said.
“And that’s good enough evidence to send us traipsing across the Red Sea and Egyptian desert?” Silas said with no small amount of irritation. “Seems like a stretch, and a waste of time considering the stakes.”
Radcliffe added, “That, and the private jet bearing the signature of Pryce’s aircraft left Tel Aviv for Luxor shortly before you did.”
Silas whistled again. “OK, now I’m intrigued.”
“You’re saying Pryce left Jerusalem for Luxor?” Celeste said.
“It appears that way.”
“Which means he’s got a leg up on us, again. Great.”
She turned to him, and said, “But it also means the man must also believe there’s a degree of truth to the possibility that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem by this Shishak fellow. Why else would he traipse across the Red Sea and Egyptian desert, as you said?”
Silas nodded. “True. That makes sense enough.” He took his fedora back and put it on his head as he pulled into the deserted parking lot to the Valley of the Kings. “Looks like we’ve got a genuine Raiders of the Lost Ark remake on our hands.”
“That’s what the hat is for,” Radcliffe deadpanned.