He opened his eyes, just a crack. The darkness was so complete he had to blink a couple of times to be sure his eyes were open. Everyone was gone. He waited to see if his vision would adjust, but there was no light to latch on to. He rolled from the position he’d held during those eternal minutes after regaining consciousness. The fire in his chest spread to every corner of his body, even the tips of his fingers. He opened his mouth to scream and shoved the heel of his right hand into his mouth. It had not been long since they’d left. They may still be above him. Quiet. Have to be quiet.
What did he think he could do? If they came back, they would search the room, look for signs of the treasure. If they were diligent, they would find what they were looking for.
Using his elbows and arms, he pulled himself across the floor, toward the opposite side of the altar. The gun in his coat pocket pressed into his stomach, dragging along beneath him. It was no use to him now. Maybe that was a good thing.
He had to take the Covenant from this place. Ruth Lieberman had shown him the compartment in which it lay. He shifted again; the fire burned through him. Even if this motion didn’t kill him, what he was planning to do most certainly would. He was not a priest. He was not a minister or rabbi. He was wearing Levi’s, but he didn’t think that counted.
Drag.
His chest felt heavier on the right side and he listed in that direction. It felt like a sack of water had been shoved inside him. He hoped this short trek across the room wouldn’t cause his other lung to fill with blood.
Was he forcing himself along only to die at the end? Ruth had been adamant about following God’s law. He mustn’t touch them. No, the rule was he mustn’t touch the Ark. There was nothing saying anything about the tablets of the Commandments themselves. He’d find out soon enough.
Two more lengths across the floor. His left foot had drifted outward and now hit the base of the altar. That meant the majority of him had already moved past it. He was close. Dust smeared his face, coating his mouth and nose. He wanted to cough, or sneeze. Doing that would probably be the last thing he ever did.
Lord Jesus, help me. Forgive me for what I’m about to do. Make me a priest of your teaching. A minister for these last few moments of my life, so that I might end my oath to your Father by serving him in this last way.
His head bumped into the wall. His left hand became caught underneath his body. His fingers opened, and he felt the small hole just above his belly. He panicked. I’ve been shot. I should be dead. God, please.
He worked his wet hand free and felt along the wall. Focus. The wall was smooth, caked in dust. Cobwebs of it stuck to his fingers. He wiped them on the wall and felt for—there! Three small indentations. He felt further and could make out the outline of the brick, pushing aside more dust from the cracks.
He could barely gasp in enough oxygen with all the dust, and was now going to try to pull this cinder block free from its resting place; move it from the spot where it had lain for almost one hundred years, with a hole in his chest and probably his back. One working lung.
Vincent laughed, then caught himself. He couldn’t risk that first and fatal cough. Still, it energized him. This was not how he thought it would end. Almost dead, lying on the floor of John Solomon’s grave, planning on pulling a forty-pound cement block from the wall.
Entry 823, he thought. This one’s a doozy.
He worked three fingers into the indentation. The inward curve of the holes allowed him a reach up to the knuckles. A good grip, well-designed by the caretaker before the caretaker before Ruth. He’d been a mason, that one; and, he assumed, a good man. At the very least, a good mason.
Here goes nothing.
He moved away from the wall, rolling onto his side and ignoring the resurgence of pain and fire inside, and pulled.
The stone slid free a couple of inches. He pulled his fingertips out to feel the distance. More than he’d expected. It gave him incentive to try again.
Gripping again with his fingers, Vincent moved himself back, pulled and rolled, using his body’s momentum. The stone followed. He didn’t check on the progress, but shimmied away and pulled again. And again. His head began to tingle. He closed his eyes. The lack of any change in the blackness gave him vertigo and he opened them again.
After a rest, Vincent slowly felt along the block, further, further. His fingers reached around and touched the far side.
It was out. He could see, vaguely, like an afterglow of a flashbulb, a steady green light beyond the brick. It illuminated nothing; in fact, it was only there if he turned his head to look with his peripheral vision. But it was there.
He rolled onto his other side. The bag that was once his lung shifted with him. He fell flat to the floor and moaned loudly, not caring if anyone heard him. He lay there and sobbed. It wasn’t the pain—it had all faded to a steady throbbing ache, everywhere—but the mental image of what his body was going through. The fear that a wrong move would cause it to open up and fall apart.
Just a little more, Lord, and if it’s Your will you can take me home with You forever.
He moved forward until his head bumped the cinder block. He had to push it aside a few inches, felt its sharp edges scrape across his skin. He touched the wall until the wall was no longer there. He couldn’t pause. Lord I am your servant, and in this moment your priest.
He hoped.
He reached inside.
And closed his fingers around old, coarse cloth. The word sackcloth came to mind, but he knew that was from years of Bible reading. He didn’t even know what sackcloth felt like. This bag had the rough texture of a potato sack, maybe thicker.
The sacred tablets of the Covenant had been separated from the Ark for centuries. The Ark had been lost a long time ago. But it had housed these very tablets—the second unblemished set carried down by Moses from Sinai, the Lord’s mountain—for longer than any historian imagined. In the end, according to Vincent’s own feeble translations of his strongbox’s contents, the Ark was sacrificed to a group of Ammonites who had come too close to victory in the Greek capital of Constantinople. There hadn’t been time to construct a decoy. The caretaker at the time had been forced to leave it for discovery while its contents were taken far, far away.
The ironic part, however, was that the Ark never was discovered. If the enemy had possession of it, there would be no need for this elaborate duplicate in Hillcrest. The old Greek caretaker—a bishop, if Vincent’s translations were correct—had written of his hopes to return to the site and learn of the Ark’s fate. Vincent never discovered if he’d ever succeeded. If the bishop ever managed to return, he mustn’t have found it. Instead, God’s written Covenant with His people moved around the world in the rough hewn sack at Vincent’s fingertips, or one very much like it.
To end up in the unsteady grasp of a middle aged man dying of a gunshot wound. But he wasn’t dead, not yet.
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered, and pulled the bag free. The stone tablets slid silently from the hole. Compared to the cinder block, this weight was manageable.
He risked a closer touch, coarse fabric between smooth stone surface and his fingers, feeling for any damage. They felt intact. An electric tingle worked along his fingers, up his arm. Vincent pulled his hand away. Its energy, this close, was like a lamp against his face. Best not to actually touch them for too long. The sensation gave him the willies. The glow was there, indistinct at the edge of his vision, offering no tangible light in the room but still... there.