Carter offered a sad smile. “Same country. Same people. We were here for weeks before it happened. I got to know some of the locals very well. And one of them…” She trailed off, her smile slipping along with a measure of her control.
Lazarus didn’t press the issue. “Is that when you learned about the rumor of the Ark being here?”
She shifted, packing the emotions away. “Rumor isn’t the right word for it. The Ark is part of Ethiopia’s cultural heritage. Every single Ethiopian Orthodox church in the world has a consecrated replica of the Ark. That’s a tradition that goes back at least to the fourth century. The traditional belief that the Ark is here goes back even further. The Kingdom of Aksum, which is where this city got its name, converted to Judaism in the time of Solomon.”
“You did your homework before you came here, didn’t you?”
“I saw a special about it on the Discovery Channel.” Carter smiled.
“So do you believe the Ark is here?”
She shrugged. “Until last night, I didn’t even think it was a real thing. But George seems to think it’s real enough, so maybe it is.”
“Do you think it’s here?” Lazarus asked.
Before she could answer, the taxi stopped in front of a dirt road that cut through a wooded area for at least a hundred yards before ending at an enormous, and almost futuristic-looking domed structure.
Lazarus handed their driver two hundred birr notes — about twenty dollars — and thanked the man. “Betam ahmesugenalew.”
The voice was not his own, but an auto-tuned approximation, the Amharic translation supplied courtesy of Dourado’s babelfish translation system. The driver replied in the same language, and a fraction of a second later, Lazarus heard the English translation in his earpiece. “No problem.”
They got out and started down the dirt path to The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo cathedral said by some to house the Ark of the Covenant. Along the way, they passed several locals, all wearing long white garments and head coverings. The women, like Carter, wore netela scarves, and the men were similar in wraps called kutas. Directly ahead, lay the front of the domed building, with a façade of large arches, the largest of which framed the wooden double doors leading inside.
Lazarus muted the phone so the babelfish translators wouldn’t translate their conversation. “That’s a church? It looks more like a moonbase.”
“That cathedral was built in the 1950s. Modern architecture was all the rage then, I guess. But there’s been a church here almost as long as there have been Christians in Ethiopia.”
She said nothing more on the subject, remaining silent as they ascended the steps and passed through the large wooden doors and into the church.
Lazarus was a bit surprised at the interior’s brightness. The apse was well-lit thanks to a ring of windows atop the dome and several arched windows with clear and colored glass. The peach-colored walls were adorned with murals and icons, all rendered in bright colors. The blue sky in several of the paintings stood in stark contrast to the red carpet and the orange curtains behind the Eucharist altar. He was still trying to process the explosion of color when Carter pointed to the altar. “There it is.”
He focused on the rectangular structure, adorned with a relief that he could not quite make out from the entrance, and a gilt overlay. “That’s the Ark?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s a tabot, a replica, but it does contain a copy of the Ten Commandments made from the original. So in a way, it is an Ark of the Covenant.”
“But it won’t have what we need to shut down the Black Knight.” He kept studying the altar. He repeated the question that she had avoided answering. “Do you think the real Ark is here?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I think Pierce is right that there were powerful political reasons for the Ethiopian rulers to claim that the Ark was here, but I also think you can’t just ignore the fact that millions of Ethiopians believe it, and have for more than two thousand years.”
“A lot of people think Elvis is still alive. That doesn’t make it true.”
A faint grin touched her lips. “It doesn’t make it untrue either.”
“Point taken.” He nodded his head in the direction of the altar. “If every Ethiopian church has one, how are we going to recognize the real deal? How do we tell the real Elvis from the impersonators?”
“The real Ark is covered in gold. I’m guessing they didn’t go that extra mile with the copies. And then there’s the lid with the angels.”
He noticed a priest, a middle-aged man wearing gray vestments, moving in their direction. “Game time,” he said. “How do we want to play this?”
“I may not be a believer, but I don’t feel comfortable lying to a priest.”
“Cards on the table, then.” He unmuted the mic on the phone and took a step toward the priest. “Good afternoon. I’m Erik Lazarus, Director of Operations for the Cerberus Group. Who can I talk to about borrowing the Ark of the Covenant?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Walking through not-quite-solid rock was a little like walking through dense fog. Although Pierce had donned his headlamp before, he couldn’t see the light, or anything else, until the crossing was complete and he stepped out onto the floor of a rough natural cave. Fiona was already there, her headlamp shining down the unexplored passage.
The passage, a narrow slot in the rock just higher than he was tall, reminded him of the Siloam Tunnel in Jerusalem, a seventeen-hundred-foot long tunnel carved in the days of King Hezekiah to provide water to the city during times of siege. This passage was wider, and of course, bone dry.
His excitement was back with a vengeance, but now that the prize was at last within his grasp, he was mindful of the other lessons he had learned from his fictional hero. “Okay, watch your step in here. There might be traps or…”
“Snakes?” Gallo asked with a wry smile.
“I was going to say other dangers, but yes, snakes or some other kind of guardian creature. We need to be on the lookout for stuff like that. Remember those things in Arkaim? I think long-term exposure to Originator relics can have an effect on evolution.”
Fiona glanced down at the sphere in her hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t be hanging onto this thing then?”
“I’m sure you’re safe,” Pierce said. “In fact, I know it.”
Gallo raised an eyebrow. “Why do I get the impression there’s something you’re not telling us?”
“Remember how I told you that only the Kohen — someone from the line of Moses’s brother Aaron — could safely approach the Ark? Well I think there’s a scientific explanation for that. A genetic trait that makes them immune to the more dangerous effects of Originator technology. Fiona has that trait.”
The young woman was surprised at this revelation. “You think I’m a Kohen?”
“Not necessarily descended from the line of Aaron, but you possess the trait. My guess is that it’s a dominant genetic factor among cultures that held onto the Mother Tongue the longest. That’s why you can use the words. You could teach them to me and I could say them until I was blue in the face, but I would never be able to make a golem.
“And there’s something else, too. Remember when you tried to clear a path through the shekinahs? You got a shock from it, but I think that shock would have killed anyone else. The point is, I think that’s the reason you had that vision of Raven back at Arkaim. You’re the only one who can use the Ark to shut down the Black Knight.”