‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Before the end times can happen, the Jews have to rebuild the Temple. Then Jesus and the Antichrist duke it out while we all watch from heaven. It’s foretold in the Book of Revelations. God, I can’t wait to see the movie!’
Jake sighed.
‘Yeah, well, we’re having some problems.’
‘Really? Like what?’
‘Oh, the director wanted to cast some English guy but he pulled out. Plus we’re having some issues with the location shooting in Italy. I’m sending one of my people out there to try and fix things up.’
Madrona made her charming sideways moue.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to Italy.’
‘Chill, hon. I’ll take you there for our babymoon.’
‘But I don’t get it. If those guys are being assholes, why don’t you just make the movie here? Nevada or Utah or Arizona or someplace.’
Jake longed to tell her the truth, to bring her in on the whole delicious secret, but that would be too risky. The fact that Madrona had nothing to say didn’t stop her talking incessantly, particularly when she got together with girlfriends like that turbo-bitch Crystl. The media had been sniffing around Rapture Works and its unique project for months. So far Martin Nguyen had managed to ensure that they gave big returns for small feeds, but as the commencement of shooting approached the predators were getting hungrier by the minute. If Madrona mentioned the truth to even one of the gals in her worship group or therapy workshop, somewhere along the line someone would figure out that there were big bucks to be made by breaking the story. At the same time, Jake couldn’t lie to Madrona. It would be like stealing candy from a kid.
‘No, it’s got to be Italy. See, every game has a scenario, but only the players can make it all pan out by making the correct moves. By moving against Saddam, the guys in DC made a good blocking move. Right now I’m set to make an even better enabling move.’
‘Wow,’ said Madrona.
‘Totally,’ agreed Jake. ‘Here’s the thing. Okay, the Jews rebuild their temple. What about all the goodies they kept in there, the lost Ark and shit? You can’t fake those. Plus a lot of people think they’re not around any more.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s like history. Way back, the Romans burned the Temple down and stole all that stuff.’
‘That was the Jews’ punishment for rejecting Jesus. But wouldn’t they have melted them down and made it into jewellery? Hey, you know what! If you ever want to buy me something, I could really use some gold bracelets.’
Jake looked around at the jagged rocks and spiky conifers, then up at the vacant blue sky.
‘Madrona, is God perfect?’
She laughed.
‘Well, I could have used longer legs. But sure, of course he is.’
‘Then everything he does must be perfect, right? So he wouldn’t have designed a game which could never work out because one of the key items of loot is lost for ever.’
‘I guess.’
‘Okay. So if the Apocalypse is going to happen, all that treasure from the Temple must still be around somewhere. And I’m pretty sure I know where one chunk of it has been hidden all this time.’
Madrona looked totally awed.
‘Really, hon? What are we talking about here?’
Her husband smiled artlessly.
‘Like, a candlestick?’
At seven o’clock precisely, Claude Rousset awoke from plump, untroubled sleep, grasped the vacuum flask of coffee he had prepared before retiring the night before and stepped outside accompanied by Fifi, leaving his wife snoring contentedly in bed. The sun had not yet reached the side of the lake where their camper van was parked, but further out the water glinted prettily in a gentle breeze. The silence was absolute.
Fifi went off to urinate on selected features of the landscape while her master sipped his coffee and started planning the day’s activities. Monsieur and Madame Rousset owned a furniture shop in Dijon. Every August they closed up the business and took to the road. Having thoroughly explored every region of France, many of them more than once, they had lately started to venture further afield. Switzerland and Spain had been first, then the Ligurian coast, Tuscany and the Amalfi peninsula. This year, feeling they were by now seasoned travellers, Claude had proposed to his wife that they tackle Sicily and le Calabre sauvage.
Sabine Rousset’s response had at first been decidedly negative, but in the end her husband had prevailed. Fears of Mafia shoot-outs, larceny, theft, extreme poverty and casual violence were absurd and anachronistic, he had declared. Italy was a leading industrial nation and a founder member of the European Union, and that included the bits south of Naples. Sabine still had her doubts, but she had not held the marriage together for almost thirty years without learning to pick her battles.
When she finally emerged, the sun was up above the mountains, the temperature had climbed several degrees and her husband had made his plans. After leaving Crotone the previous day, they had visited San Severina and the Bosco del Gariglione, one of the few remaining patches of the primeval forest that had once covered these mountains — named selva, ‘wild’, by the Romans, later corrupted to Sila, as the extract from the Michelin guide read aloud at some length by Claude had explained.
Apart from the lake beside which they had spent the night, in a car park off a minor road, there appeared to be little more to detain them in the interior. After breakfast, they would therefore abandon these rugged heights and descend to Cosenza (visite 3 heures environ) and thence to the coast, where Claude had located a recommended camp site with good facilities close to shops and the beach. On the way he proposed a detour to the abandoned town of Altomonte, whose ruins were on a plateau now inaccessible to vehicles and required a stiff climb to reach, but which the guidebook described as suggestif, one of the highest terms of commendation in Monsieur Rousset’s touristic lexicon.
They arrived shortly after ten o’clock. There were two tracks leading up to the ruins, one of which left from the outskirts of the new town which had replaced its earlier namesake, but the guide made it clear that the other, accessible off a narrow and winding road with passing places, was the more suggestive. It was accordingly this route that Claude had chosen. The heat was still bearable and the small unpaved parking area was shaded by a grove of giant holm oaks. Having inspected the prospect with a beady eye, Madame Rousset professed herself perfectly content to remain in the camper while her husband explored this particular aspect of Calabrian savagery to his heart’s content, just so long as they got to Cosenza in time for lunch. Her husband indicated gesturally that while he would not of course contest this decision, the loss was hers. Fifi, on the other hand, was clearly dying to stretch her legs and to stake a urinary claim on yet more virgin territory.
At first the path wound gently upwards through a dense undergrowth of scrub and spindly trees, but after a while the character of the landscape abruptly changed. The vegetation died out for want of soil and the way ahead became a series of steep and abrupt ramps quarried out of the crevices and gullies in the sheer rock face. The reasons given by the guidebook for both the construction and the abandonment of the original town at once became clear. In the centuries when marauding armies had processed through the area every few years — Greeks, Romans, the Goths led by Alaric, and later the French, the Spanish and Garibaldi’s ragged army of liberation — this site had been a natural and virtually impregnable fortress, conveniently hidden from the invaders’ view and, if discovered by chance, requiring infinitely more time and effort to conquer than it was worth.