The mercenary was probably right about that.
“We can go in,” the man went on. “Sweep the place for her.”
He considered the offer, trying to ignore the pulsating ache between his legs. If they tried to grab Gallo in public it would only make matters worse, and they would be no closer to finding the Ark of the Covenant. The move against Pierce in Jordan had been premature, but his original plan was still sound. Let Gallo and Pierce find the Ark, and then take it away from them.
But if he was going to pull it off, he would need more than just a quartet of hired military rejects.
“No,” he told Williams. “Let’s hold off on that. Come back to the airport. I’ve got a better idea.”
FORTY-NINE
The revelation had come to Pierce in the Templar chapel, deep beneath Mount Nebo. Pierce had contacted Dourado, and she had started tracking Fallon even before his plane left the Amman airport. When Gallo had escaped from Fallon at Chartres Cathedral, the Cerberus jet was already in French airspace. Less than an hour later, the three of them were together again, exhausted but no worse for wear.
The clock was still ticking, but now Pierce knew where they needed to go. He had explained his epiphany during the short hop across the English Channel.
“The Templars came to Jerusalem looking for the Ark. They had the same scrolls and scriptures that led us to Jeremiah’s secret hiding place. What they didn’t have, at least not until they set up shop on the Temple Mount, was a standard of measurement. The true length of the Sacred cubit.
“The fresco we found showed the Templars using a measuring stick. Historically, the length of the cubit was always understood to be the approximate distance from a man’s elbow to fingertip. Roughly eighteen inches. And that’s the figure they would have been most familiar with. It’s a more or less constant ratio of one cubit to average height — not quite one-fourth. Back then, the average height for a man was about five and half feet, but with better nutrition, the average is now almost six feet. As we know, the Sacred cubit is just over twenty-five inches. Based on the one-fourth rule, that could suggest the Sacred cubit was derived from a race of people with an average height of about one hundred inches — over eight feet.”
“Giants,” Gallo said. “Like Goliath and the Rephaim.”
“I know about Goliath,” said Dourado, who was listening in on speaker phone. “But who or what are the Rephaim?”
“Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. Depending on how you interpret the cubit, Goliath was at least nine feet tall, but he wasn’t just an outlier. Goliath belonged to a tribe known as the Rephaim, who were known for being giants.” Gallo turned to Fiona. “That name translates to: ‘the people whose speech sounds like buzzing.’”
Fiona caught on. “They knew the Mother Tongue.”
Gallo gave a knowing nod. “It’s possible. They were descended from an earlier tribe called the Anakim — sons of Anak. The Hebrews encountered them on the edge of the Promised Land. The ancient Greek word Anax, from which Anak is probably derived, is used to indicate royalty but also divine power. Both the Rephaim and the Anakim are associated with ancient ancestors living in the sheol, the Hebrew word for the pit or underworld. And here we come full circle, the Rephaim were descendants of the Nephilim.”
“And the Sacred cubit was their measurement,” Pierce said. “There was zero chance of the Templars figuring that out. To find the precise location where Jeremiah concealed the Ark, they would have needed to know the exact length of the Sacred cubit, and that’s a calculation they were able to make from something they found on the Temple Mount.”
“That makes sense,” Gallo said, “but how does it tell us where the Ark went after they found it?”
Pierce answered with a question. “How do we know the length of the Sacred cubit?”
“Cintia told us,” Fiona said.
“And I learned about it from the writings of Sir Isaac Newton,” Dourado put in.
“So, how did Newton figure it out?”
As Fiona and Gallo exchanged a look, Dourado answered. “According to the paper he wrote, it was by researching ancient writings.”
“That’s one possible answer,” Pierce said, grinning. “But how did he arrive at the correct figure, when all those earlier scholars couldn’t get it right? And remember, there was no uniform standard of measurement until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, no way to communicate what those distances meant.”
Gallo grasped what he was trying to say. “You think Isaac Newton got his measurements from the Ark?”
“It’s the perfect standard of measurement. The Bible gives the exact dimensions of the Ark in cubits. Newton’s calculation was the basis for his theories on light, and probably everything else, too. He invented calculus just so he could understand the significance of the Sacred cubit, and that opened his eyes to the laws of gravity and motion. The Sacred cubit was the key to unlocking all of that because it came from the Originators…” He smiled at Gallo. “…aka, the Nephilim, a technologically advanced alie — err, species.”
“‘If I have seen further than others,’” Gallo murmured, reciting one of Newton’s most enduring quotes. “‘It is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ He wasn’t just talking about intellectual giants, was he?”
She blew out her breath with a low whistle. “Well, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard today. Connect the dots for me. How do we get from the Templars to Sir Isaac Newton?”
“I don’t have it all worked out,” Pierce admitted. “Cintia, maybe you can fact-check me on some of this. But here’s what I think happened: The Templars found the Ark and held on to it for a couple of centuries, believing that they would one day be able to rebuild Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. When they learned of King Philip’s plot against them, the Ark was the one secret they had to keep, so they confessed to the wildest crimes imaginable and spun tales of treasure ships, all to hide the one thing that was more important to them than their reputation or even their lives. They went underground, just like all the conspiracy theories say, creating secret societies that would protect the Ark and preserve the wisdom and knowledge of the Templars through the ages.”
“Kind of like us?” Fiona mused.
“Except they were holding off until all those old prophecies about the Jews returning to Mount Zion and rebuilding the Temple came true. They hid their secrets in rituals and stories. Only the highest level initiates would ever know the whole truth.”
“You’re talking about the Freemasons,” Gallo said. “Was Newton a Mason?”
“Let me check,” Dourado said. “Okay, it looks like the first lodge in London opened in 1717, ten years before Newton died… Oh.”
“Oh?” Pierce prompted.
“I’m sending you a picture. It’s the seal of the London Grand Lodge.”
The phone buzzed as the image came via text message. Pierce tapped on the screen to open the file.
“Is that…?” Gallo started.
“I think so.” Pierce zoomed in on the feature of the seal that he suspected had caught everyone’s attention.
“That’s the Ark!” Fiona said.
“It makes sense,” Pierce explained. “The Masons see themselves as the spiritual heirs to Hiram, the architect of Solomon’s temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Ark and anything related to the Temple is of paramount importance, symbolically at least.”