The spring was a blessing. The fact that Caleb’s tracks led beyond the spring towards the desert was not.
They traveled in silence mostly, Rebecca to the front and Michael to her left and behind, half a camel. The beasts plodded on soft hoofs, rocking with each step. Their tan hides twitched with the occasional fly, and they blinked against ever-present gnats eager to feed at the moisture in their eyes. They smelled of hay and dung, but perched so high on the hump, Rebecca caught a full whiff only occasionally.
The terrain had flattened from its steady descent, and patches of white salt replaced the loamy sand of the hills. They came to an acacia tree—the last one before the desert by the looks of it—and Rebecca pulled up under its meager shade.
“I thought the Negev was hot.”
“Wait till we get to the desert,” Michael said.
“I don’t think we’ll be going into the desert. Only a proper idiot would walk in on foot.”
“Maybe he is a proper idiot.”
She humphed and nudged her camel forward. They moved on with the sun at their backs now. To anyone seeing them trudging along on camels dressed in tan khakis with desert hats and leather boots, they might look like two lost archaeologists. Not that there was anyone to see them this far out.
“Do you mind if I speak frankly, sir?” Michael asked after a while.
“Go ahead. I don’t think we have curious ears out here.”
“What do you make of this mission?”
She knew what he was asking but played along anyway. “What do you mean?”
“We’re over fifteen hundred kilometers from Israel, laying siege to an empty monastery and now chasing a monk into the desert.”
“He’s not a monk and I don’t think he went into the desert.”
“A madman then. You can’t seriously believe we’ll find the Ark of the Covenant.”
There it was. “You don’t believe it exists?”
“Sure it exists. But I’m not sure it will ever be found. There are other ways to wage a war than to walk through deserts on camels looking for a gold box.”
She eyed him sharply. “A gold box?”
“The Ark is—”
“I know what the Ark is. I don’t know your faith—for all I know you don’t believe in God. But for any Jew who still believes in God, the Ark is no gold box.”
“Of course, I know—”
“No, I don’t think you do, or you wouldn’t have said it,” she said. “The Ark of the Covenant is Israel. Do you understand this? We have never been a true nation without it, and we never will. It’s the dwelling place of God on earth. The Temple was built to house it, and our religion has always centered around it. Without the Ark there is no need for a nation to protect it, is there?”
“We have a nation now.”
“You call this tiny experiment which has sputtered along for fifty years a nation? No, Michael, we’re trying to become a nation, but we are not really a nation, not yet. My father says that we’re a sapling trying to become a tree.
But every day the dirt is being washed from our roots and we watch it float downstream and argue over its color. There’s your nation. And we refuse to turn to the gardener—to God—for help because we’ve forgotten why we were planted.”
The desert was fast approaching, and Caleb’s tracks did not stop.
“I’ve never heard it said like that,” Michael said.
“I don’t know if we will actually find the Ark—frankly I doubt it. But I can tell you that this evidence we have is enough to bring most archaeologists panting.”
She turned to him and smiled. “It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? In New York a thousand traders are yelling at the Big Board, desperate to make a few dollars; in Paris lovers are sitting beside a canal for a portrait; in Jerusalem two rabbis are sitting at the Western Wall, arguing about whether a woman should be allowed to hold a weapon. And here we are, in the most remote corner of the earth, on the heels of literally the greatest discovery of all time. Who knows what treasures are hiding under this sand, but believe me, soldier, we’re not looking for a gold box. We’re looking for the presence of God. The only hope for Israel. No bomb, no politician, no man—not a million men—can accomplish what the Ark can accomplish for Israel.”
They rode on, and Michael remained silent. It was no wonder Israel was losing its soul, Rebecca thought. Not even her soldiers understood her destiny.
They came to the edge of the desert an hour later. It was then, for the first time, that Rebecca realized their prey was no ordinary man.
“His tracks go in,” Michael said.
Sure enough. She could see where the light coating of dust had been disturbed. He’d walked in twenty meters or so, then laid down before standing and continuing into the heart of the salt flats.
“He’s tired,” Michael said, pointing to the weaving trail.
The footprints disappeared into a seemingly limitless horizon. He could be a kilometer out, he could be ten kilometers out, although unless he had some protection from the sun and a tank of water she guessed it would be closer to a kilometer. Either way they would find him soon.
She shook her head. “I would take on a battalion of Palestinians over this any day. What possesses a man to go in there on foot?”
“What possesses Palestinian children to throw rocks?” Michael responded.
“Brainwashing.”
“So maybe his brain is washed. It’s a hot day.”
“Well, let’s just hope he still remembers what will lead us to the Ark.” She slapped her camel. “Come on, he can’t be far. Let’s get him and get out before nightfall.”
The camel snorted, reluctant to step onto the salt.
Rebecca smacked the beast again, and it finally slumped forward. The last of the sand fell away, and they rode out onto the forbidden flats.
It had been a leper colony, not a village, and the fact had sent Ismael into a fit of sorts. He blamed it on the frustration the woman had brought him. The Jew-witch made him kill the three lepers—a man, a woman, and a child, who’d come out in their rags to ask him why he was taking their prized possession.
At least that’s what he assumed they were asking him. It didn’t matter. He was so startled by their sagging faces that he spun and shot the first through the head. Seeing the man topple backward filled him with a sense of purpose. The girl and the woman lepers became Jews in his mind, and he shot them too.
Unfortunately, the shot had frightened the horse and it took him half an hour to get his hands back on the animal.
Now it was midday and he had only just found the camel’s tracks.
Ismael rode without a saddle, and the mare’s sweat had soaked his pants. When this was done, he would shoot the horse. He lifted his rifle and sighted at the distant desert. Waves of heat shimmered across its surface. He had grown up in the desert; he doubted the Jew had. Her camel could outlast his horse, but she could not outlast him. Not in the desert. It was the one bright side to this unfortunate delay.
Ismael lowered the glasses and kicked the horse.
Zakkai stood back, panting. It had taken them nearly six hours to carve out the two holes that stared up at them like black eyes. The first had ended in a shallow chamber, no more than seventeen centimeters deep and maybe fifty centimeters wide. What purpose it served was beyond either of them. It had taken Zakkai twenty minutes to persuade Jason to continue.
Now it looked as if his argument had vindicated itself.
“So what do you make of it?” Jason asked.
“Hand me the torch,” Zakkai said, reaching his hand out.
Jason plucked the fire stick from the wall and pushed it into Zakkai’s hand. “How big is it?”
Zakkai dropped to one knee and lowered the flame into the hole. He bent over and waved the torch to his right. An underground wall glowed three meters further in. “Big. It’s a full room.”
“Empty?”
“No.”
Zakkai dipped his head through the opening. The torch’s flame suddenly seared his arm, and he instinctively jerked it back, dropping the fire.
“That was smart,” Jason said.
Zakkai ignored him. The room below flickered in the torchlight, a treasure trove of artifacts. Not artifacts of antiquity, but those of a recent day— simple furniture, bookcases stuffed with dusty books, a couple of chairs. And on the far side, another opening, gaping black in the shadows.
Zakkai scrambled to his feet. “Help me in.”
“You sure? Is it safe?”
“Please, just do as I say.” He stretched out a hand. “Lower me in.”
Jason grabbed his hand and lowered him into the hole. It felt like his shoulder might pull out of joint, but Zakkai hardly cared.
“Are you down?”
Zakkai looked down. The floor was a meter below him. “Let go,” he called. His voice sounded dead in the hollow room. Jason released him and he landed easily among the pile of rubble they’d hacked from the ceiling. He picked up the torch and turned it slowly around the room.
The chamber was roughly three meters by five meters, hewn from solid rock and worn smooth over many years. A small table and a lone glass lamp sat to his left, both covered in a thick layer of dust. Behind the table, two old wood chairs. To his right, short bookcases lined the wall, housing dozens of books.
“Should I come down?”
“Come,” Zakkai said. The word sounded too loud for the small room.
A rope dropped down beside Zakkai. Jason eased himself into the chamber. For a moment they stood, side by side, silent.
“I . . . I recognize this room,” Jason said softly, as if afraid to disturb the stillness.
“You do?”
“It’s where I first met Caleb. This is where Father Matthew brought me. I wonder why we never found it when we rebuilt . . .”
Zakkai turned and motioned towards the far wall. The entry to what appeared to be a collapsed tunnel faced them, choked with large slabs of rock.
“That’s why,” Jason said. “The tunnel has collapsed.”
“But Caleb must have known that his room was here. Why didn’t you just excavate?”
“We were building new lives,” Jason said. “Not digging up old ones.”
Zakkai turned back to face the opening beside the table. “And have you been in there?”
“No. Caleb came out from there.”
Zakkai swallowed and bent down to read the spines of the books nearest him. The bookcases were low to the ground. He blew and dust puffed. The Seven Storey Mountain—Thomas Merton. Another dozen books by the same author. A collection of works in Hebrew, others in Amharic.
“Does Caleb know Hebrew?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“This is incredible. He lived down here?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard some things. But I couldn’t have imagined this. It’s not where you’d expect to find a ten-year-old boy.”
“No.”
Zakkai stood. He could nearly hear the voices of Caleb’s old teacher echoing softly off the stone. The workmanship of the walls took Zakkai back to the blind priest’s story. How long ago had the room been carved out of the rock? And by what kinds of instruments? If the old man’s story was right, the Templars themselves had brought Celtic masonry and construction methods to Ethiopia. This monastery and, if so, this room could have been carved under the supervision of a lost order of the Templars.
Jason stood in silence, taken back in time by the images that now surrounded him. He looked stunned.
Zakkai walked up to the arched entry into the second room and Jason followed. He fed the torch into the room and knew immediately that they were looking at Caleb’s bedroom. He stepped in. A wool blanket neatly covered the small wood-frame bed along one wall. Above the bed, a single painting of Christ on the cross. Beside the bed, a nightstand with a dusty oil lamp. And on the other wall, more books. As many as there were in the main room—ancient books written by monks and scribes—names unfamiliar to Zakkai except by the titles preceding them.
“What kind of boy lived here?” he asked in wonder.
Jason looked around. “He was abandoned at the gate as an infant. A war child. Father Matthew took him in and raised him as a son. Until the day the monastery was leveled, Caleb never once stepped outside these walls. He was ten then. We took him to the United States because we thought that would be best for him.”
“We?”
“Leiah and I. She was a Red Cross nurse then.” He paused. “His pure faith changed America in ways we could never have imagined. But America changed him too.”
“The miracles,” Zakkai said. He’d heard the incredible stories.
“Yes. But most people don’t know the price he paid. Caleb has lived a tormented life, divided between two realities.” Jason averted his eyes, but Zakkai could see the moisture glistening in the torchlight.
“I’m sorry,” Zakkai said.
“I think Caleb is one of the few who knows why Christ sweat blood when he asked God to remove the cup. It wasn’t the physical suffering; it was a greater suffering, the kind that tears at your soul. Caleb never has recovered.”
Zakkai looked away, suddenly awkward in the heaviness of the moment.
Jason seemed to come to himself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to go on about Christ to a Jew—”
“No, no. Not all Jews despise the man.”
They stood in silence for several long seconds.
Zakkai took a deep breath. “Well, I think it’s time we begin our search.”
“The closest thing to an Ark you’ll find here is a picture in one of these books,” Jason said.
“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but we are in Caleb’s room. The same Caleb who may very well hold the key to the Ark’s location. Short of the man himself, we could have hoped for no better find.”
“It’s the room of a child.”
“And according to Hadane, Caleb was a child when Father Matthew hid the Ark.” Zakkai stepped into the main room and planted the torch into an old bracket on the wall.
“What are you planning on searching?” Jason asked, following.
“We need more light down here. Two more torches at least. And we could use some help. Do you think your wife would be willing?”
“I guess that depends. I’m pretty sure she won’t be up to swinging a pick around. What are you planning to search?” he asked again.
“Everything,” Zakkai said through a grin. “Every square inch. Every piece of paper, every page, every bit of furniture. Everything. There is something here; I can feel it in my bones. And believe me, my friend, I know bones.”
The sun beat at his back and Caleb thought he was only a few meters from death. How he had managed to walk this long he could not remember because his mind had started to close down an hour ago.
If there had been a breeze, his sweat may have provided some relief, but the air refused to move. Or if it did move, the movement was straight up, rising with the force of heat, like a blast furnace reaching up into his pant legs and baking his knees. The only thing that was missing was the roar of the flames.
Each footfall sounded with a dull thud, and the thuds had slowed as of late. His mouth had dried completely, so that if he tried to open it—which he no longer did—his lips at least objected. They had glued shut. Water became a desperate dream. Waterfalls crashed through his mind, and he spent the hours tasting each drop of mist they threw in the air. He would’ve cut off a leg for a splash.
The horizon was flat except for the lump to his left. And even that lump wasn’t a lump at all, but a node in his mind, rising to mock him.
In fact, maybe the desert wasn’t a desert at all. Maybe he was walking through his own life. Plodding into his own heart. A landscape stripped of its water and left to die.
How had he come to this point? There was a time not too long ago when he could sing and fill the desert with rivers and a thousand trees. But even the memory of that time sat like an obscure lump in his mind.
A lump like that lump on the edge of the desert ahead of him.
His right leg suddenly gave way and he fell. His upper torso slammed onto the hard salt before he could move an arm to break the fall. His breath left him and he lay, arm pinned under his body, suffocating, thinking that the moment of death had finally, mercifully come.
But then his wind returned. He thought about licking the salt, but decided that prying his lips apart to get his tongue out would be too difficult.
It took him a long time to maneuver his body to stand because his right arm had stopped functioning. Pain throbbed through his side when he tried to use it. Maybe it was broken; maybe it was dislocated; maybe it was just gone.
Caleb looked around, disorientated. Which direction had he been walking? He turned slowly with his right shoulder dipped. The lump on the horizon filled his vision. Yes, he had been walking towards the lump. The node in his mind.
He shuffled forward.
And what was he doing in this desert? Looking for water. No, looking for a priest named Hadane who could give him water. No, looking for help from a priest named Hadane because his mother and father needed help. Although right now a cup of water seemed more like help than any of . . .
Caleb stopped. It was the lump that stopped him. That lump on the horizon which, now that he thought about it, had been there for a while. He straightened and squinted at it.
A wet squishing sound filled his ears. His heart had decided that this lump might be important. What if it wasn’t a lump?
The image jumped into focus, as if his mind had been waiting for that question to connect itself to his eyeballs. It was a rock formation! Not a round lumpy rock formation, but a square one that jutted out of the white flats like a cluster of skyscrapers on the horizon.
Caleb couldn’t contain the emotion that flooded his eyes. He let out a sob that parted his lips. He could feel the skin tear, but the pain hardly registered.
Hope, sweet hope, was swallowing him. He shuffled forward without removing his eyes from the rock. “Oh, God, thank you! Oh, God, thank you!”
The first blister appeared ten minutes later. One moment Caleb was unaware that his right foot was rubbing raw, and the next he was limping through a jagged pain.
And the rock formation had not come any closer. Which meant that it was very large, and that was good. And very far, which was not good.
The sun was in the western sky, halfway to the horizon. He had to reach the rock by nightfall.