They scoured the monastery’s lower levels, inch by inch through the night. There were a hundred nooks and crannies where an Ark might have been tucked away, but the wavering flames of their torches weren’t quick to reveal anything except brown rock.
Including the tunnel Caleb had escaped through, only four tunnels remained out of the dozens that had once crisscrossed the subterranean foundation. When they’d rebuilt the monastery they’d covered the rest with concrete, sealing only God knew what. Unfortunately, the old maze of tunnels now acted as the monastery’s foundation, and an uncalculated tampering with it might bring down the whole thing.
After their first pass, Zakkai approached Jason and persuaded him to help them search. No one knew the foundation of the monastery like Jason, and after a lengthy retelling of the old Falasha priest’s story, Jason reluctantly agreed. If he doubted that the Ark was indeed hidden under the monastery, he seemed persuaded that the sooner the question was resolved, the sooner the Israelis would leave.
The renowned archaeologist led Jason and Rebecca through each chamber, asking very specific questions about the reconstruction project Jason had overseen fifteen years earlier. Most of the questions had to do with distances.
“How far are we from the outer wall?”
“I don’t know,” Jason answered. “We didn’t exactly work off blueprints.”
“But roughly. To your best recollection.”
“Five, maybe six meters.”
Zakkai would jot that down. “And when you laid the floor above, did this wall run parallel to the wall above or was it offset?”
“I’m not sure I see what difference it makes.”
“But I am, so please—”
“This was mostly just a large slab of rock, just like you see it today. Any tunnels were buried when the first monastery came down. Caleb knew; he grew up in the old monastery.”
“Splendid, but we don’t have Caleb, do we? You made sure of that.”
Jason nodded. “So you want to know if the wall above is parallel to the old one?”
“Yes. It gives me an indication of whether or not the old wall was load bearing—deduction, the foremost tool used by us moles.”
“It was offset,” Jason said.
And so on Zakkai went, with the dogged method of a seasoned scientist. He plotted each wall on a grid and shaded areas that he considered able to support a cavern large enough to house the Ark. It was guesswork, deduction as he called it, but the guessing was being done by one of the sharpest archaeological minds on earth.
One tunnel in particular interested Zakkai. It had supposedly led to a chamber deep underground which fed into several small rooms. Caleb had slept there as a young child, Jason told them. He grew up there by the lights of torches most of his early years. Now the tunnel was diverted into the monastery’s root cellar, a large damp room with enough potatoes to hold an army for a month. Jason thought the root cellar was directly above Caleb’s old room.
“Was he kept there against his will?” Zakkai asked.
“Heavens no. He had the run of the place. But he preferred it, studying by torchlight.”
Zakkai spent an hour tapping the floor and walls, searching for any anomaly that might shed light on what lay behind. The effort proved nothing. After mapping the room, Zakkai finally sighed and suggested they move on.
Rebecca knew then that short of resorting to dynamite, finding anything Father Matthew might have hidden would prove hopeless without Caleb. Dynamite was out of the question because of the Ark. They needed Caleb.
They had just left the room when Rebecca’s radio squawked. “Avraham has just returned, sir.”
She glanced at her watch. Ten o’clock. “I’ll be right there.”
Rebecca left them and climbed through the now familiar tunnels to the kitchen where they had set up a command post of sorts. Avraham stood alone by the stove, sipping a cup of hot tea.
“Well?”
He frowned. “Nothing.” He tossed her four shells: 726 rounds. “I found these behind a rock, but whoever shot them is long gone.”
“How do you know they aren’t waiting?”
“Because I know. I covered the perimeter.”
“They could have moved.”
“I just walked across the driveway. If anyone was out there, I wouldn’t be standing here drinking tea, would I?”
He wasn’t only insolent and proud, he was thickheaded, she thought. But there was some reason to his conclusion.
“He’ll show up again,” she said. “I want you to sweep the perimeter again at first light. Samuel will be in charge while I’m gone. You do nothing without his permission.”
Avraham blinked. “While you’re gone where?”
“I’m going after Caleb in the morning. Searching the monastery without him is pointless.”
“You’re going alone? Perhaps I should come with you,” he said through a smile.
“I can handle a farm boy. It’s the monastery I’m more concerned about. If Caleb wasn’t so critical to our mission, I would send someone else to bring him in. But nine of you should be able to hold this fortress from a dozen unarmed civilians, don’t you think?”
“I think that your father would have a few words about your running off after a man by yourself.”
“I didn’t say I was going alone. I’m taking Michael. And you obviously don’t understand my father. One of your problems, Avraham, is that you’re trapped in a time when women were considered inferior fighters to men. You’d think my record alone would be enough to help you pull your head from—”
“Your record is overrated,” Avraham interrupted. “So you’ve killed a handful of Palestinians—most of them with a rifle. In a street fight I think you’d be killed before you had the time to pluck your pretty little eyebrows. Frankly, a shovel suits you more than a gun.”
Rebecca felt heat wash down her back, and she fought the impulse to slap his face.
“Be careful, Avraham. One day we might have to see if your theory holds true. In the meantime, you will follow my orders, and I’m ordering you to follow Samuel. If you cross him while I’m gone, you’ll regret it. Are we clear?”
He scowled, and Rebecca knew that too much had passed between them for Avraham to ignore. The day would come when this man would test her resolve beyond words.
“You’re dismissed, Avraham.”
He slammed the cup down and ignored the tea that splashed over his hand. “Yes, sir,” he said and walked out the back.
Rebecca left the kitchen, frustrated with her own pride. The last thing she needed was a soldier as powerful as Avraham to stand in her way. Or worse, in Samuel’s way.
She entered the main sanctuary—the community sat in small groups or slept in corners, placid enough. She scanned them quickly and found who she was looking for. Leiah sat in the far corner, staring at her.
Rebecca strode towards her.
Leiah watched the woman they called “sir” walk towards her and made no attempt to hide the frown that twisted her face.
The Jewish zealot was a beautiful woman with her jet-black hair and pouting lips, a fact which bothered her. The disparity between her feminine demeanor and the fact that she was not only a soldier, but an accomplished soldier, was unnerving. The whole idea of being invaded by these zealots angered her. Marching around with guns, taking a monastery by force—that wasn’t what Christ had in mind. Of course, Rebecca probably didn’t care what Christ had in mind. She was too busy looking for her own Messiah.
“Hello, Leiah.” Rebecca smiled.
“What? No Ark?”
“We didn’t expect to walk in and find it sitting on the coffee table.” Rebecca looked carefully into her eyes. “If you didn’t know that this monastery existed, hidden away from the world in this remote valley, you might scour the hills for years without finding it, yes? Yet here it is, existing in obscurity, beyond the eyes of the world. Like the Ark. It’s remained hidden from the world for twenty-five hundred years, in an obscure location unknown to even those who walk near it every day. There are a hundred walls below us that could hide the Ark.”
“These walls don’t belong to you.”
“No, but the Ark does.”
“Then I’m sure your government is capable of making arrangements to find it in an orderly fashion.”
“My government? The Knesset’s terrified of the Ark’s discovery. And even if they weren’t, we both know that Ethiopia would never allow its removal. It has become part of this nation’s religion.”
“If you aren’t supported by the Israeli government, then why are you here? You’re treasure hunters?”
“We’re here on behalf of Israel. You’re a Christian—even the Christian knows this. If our people don’t turn back to God, our nation will inevitably fracture and pull apart at the seams. Without a Temple, our people will never turn back to God. Without the Ark, we will never rebuild the Temple. And now, it seems we won’t find the Ark. Not without your son. We need him, Leiah.”
Rebecca’s eyes momentarily flashed with a conviction that made Leiah wonder what she was really thinking.
“Even if Caleb possessed the key to the Ark, I would never endanger his life for your cause,” Leiah said.
“His life is endangered already. I don’t think you realize how many people would kill him to prevent the Ark’s discovery. He may spend the rest of his life running from assassins.”
“You’re overstating this ridiculous situation,” Leiah said. But for the first time she considered the possibility that she had just heard a strain of truth. “This whole thing’s absurd!”
“I’m only asking you to help us learn just how absurd it is. If the Ark isn’t here, we’ll leave you in peace—you have my word. If the Ark is here, better we discover it than the Arabs, trust me.”
“Trust you? And how do you expect me to help you?”
Rebecca turned, crossed her arms, and paced, tilting her head to look at the domed ceiling.
“You’re his mother. Surely in all these years he’s mentioned the key.” She faced Leiah again. “Not a physical key, but a clue to its location. If you were to tell me, we could leave Caleb out of this altogether.”
“Yes, we could, but he didn’t. I don’t think your key exists. You’re right, he would have mentioned it, but he didn’t. So have your look around and leave us.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that. We’re here because of an authentic letter—a piece to a puzzle that archaeologists have been scratching their heads over for centuries. The letter was given to us by a man who knew Father Matthew— an old blind Falasha priest named Raphael Hadane. I don’t believe he was lying.”
Leiah blinked. The name rang in her mind like a gong. Hadane. Alone it might not have meant anything, but a Hadane who was a Falasha priest? She had heard that name. Caleb had told her that name.
“What is it?” Rebecca asked.
“Nothing.”
“I’m not an idiot. I just said something that made your eyes light up like stars. You’ve heard about the priest?”
“No. I don’t know.” And what if she told Rebecca? Would it be in their favor or work against them?
“I don’t know?” Rebecca said. “I don’t know means yes.”
“Maybe, but either way it’s got nothing to do with a key. The name Hadane might be familiar—so what? There are probably a hundred priests with the last name of Hadane. It’s a common Falasha name.”
“But do you know anything at all about this particular priest named Hadane? Did Caleb know him?” Rebecca sounded more like an officer interrogating a prisoner than a God-fearing zealot now.
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. Hadane might have been a man in the desert—a friend of Father Matthew. But I swear that doesn’t mean a thing. Like I said, there are probably a thousand Hadanes.”
Rebecca glared at her. “You don’t believe me when I say your son is in danger?”
“Listen to me! You go ahead and look for your precious relic, but if you touch one hair on my son’s head, I swear I will—”
“You’ll what, scream at me? Spit in my face? Maybe even scratch my eyes out! I’m not sure you realize what you’re dealing with.”
“And I’m not sure you realize who you’re talking to.”
They stared at each other for a few seconds, silent.
“You love your child, that’s good,” Rebecca said. “My mother loved her child too. The child was five years old and knew how to count to one hundred and I loved her as much as my mother did. And then one day a bus bomb killed them both. It happens. The Messiah will change that. The Ark will bring the Messiah.”
Rebecca walked away and Leiah wasn’t sure whether she wanted to run after her and issue an apology or throw a shoe at her.
Caleb slowed to a walk and slogged forward on numb legs. The questions drummed their way into a monotony that took the edge off his panic. Darkness had settled in a stillness broken only by the repeated calls of jackals in the night.
He stumbled on the spring near midnight and gorged himself with its cold water. In his best moments, he was grateful for the cool. If he was very lucky, he would make the desert before the sun rose. In his worst moments, he felt sure that when he did reach the desert it would bake him and leave him in a pile of bleached bones for the next traveler to step over.
The jackals faded in the wee hours and Caleb knew it was because not even jackals traveled this close to the salt flats. The only life in this desert, other than the occasional rat, would be found under a microscope. And yet he plodded on. A hopelessly blind fool, trudging to his own death.
A dozen times he thought about turning back; a dozen times he reluctantly discarded the notion. His bones told him to walk on. Never mind that those same bones would end in a heap, eaten clean by the rats; never mind that each step took him further from the only life he’d ever known. He had committed himself to head east, and he would head east.
When dawn began to gray the landscape, he saw that he was very near the white sands of the desert. He’d come a long way, but he still hadn’t reached the true desert. He plodded on.
Then the sun cleared the eastern horizon, a huge orange ball of flame. It had been twenty-four hours since his last rest, and his muscles were rebelling.
Caleb stopped and looked around. He’d come to a shelf of rock scattered with pockets of sand. The rock faded into the blazing white salt flats two hundred meters ahead.
He turned slowly and looked at the hills he’d crossed during the night. They rose slowly to a pale blue sky. From where he stood he couldn’t see a single shrub or tree. A few browned plants pocked the hills, but if rain had fallen here in the last year, there was no sign of it.
When he turned back to the desert, vertigo nearly took his legs from under him. He had to rest. But he couldn’t stop here without shade. It would be like lying down in an oven. He would fall asleep and dry up. No, he had to keep moving.
He moved one foot forward, and then the next. His sandals settled on their first patch of rock-hard salt. He took three more steps and then stopped again.
It was as if he’d crossed a barrier, the one that separated life from death, maybe. Walking out onto the endless flats, exhausted and parched, without the slightest inkling of where he was headed struck him as a terrible thing to do. Maybe even evil.
His legs suddenly folded and he sat hard on his rump.
He couldn’t do it.
“Promise me one thing, Caleb.”
“Have you ever crossed the desert, Dada?”
“No.”
“Then please stop your talking and pass me that cool water you just drew from the well. I am very thirsty.”
The thoughts drifted through his mind as if on stray clouds.
“Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” he said, but he didn’t hear his own words. Maybe he hadn’t said them at all.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of death . . .
Caleb slumped to his back and lay spread eagle, facing the burning sky.
I will fear no evil.
Just keep the sun off my back and I’ll be okay.
Blue faded to gray and then to black.