“Did they find anything?”
The Patriarch pointed to the floor of the church. “There used to be a cavern under here, now filled in. For centuries it had been used to store the valuables of the church. When the British soldiers broke in, they ransacked it, taking that tapestry among many other items, but they failed to notice a sealed chamber at the back. Unfortunately, the Germans were very thorough and tested all of the walls, eventually discovering a hollow space. In it was the only great treasure we lost to the Nazis, a treasure that we had kept secret for centuries and a loss that we have not spoken of until now.”
He turned and spoke to his assistant, who reached into an old wooden chest embedded in the floor behind the Patriarch’s seat and pulled out a worn leather folio volume. He put it on the Patriarch’s lap and opened it up, the parchment crackling as he turned the leaves. After about a dozen pages the Patriarch put out his hand, and the man stopped turning and stood back. The Patriarch swiveled the folio on his lap so that it was facing Jack, and looked at him. “This is an old illustration of it, made in the sixteenth century. That is what they stole.”
Jack stood up for a better view and stared at the image, a faded painting of an inscription picked out in gold with the letters in black. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating, and he sat back down again, stunned, needing a few moments to marshal his thoughts.
“As you can see, the artifact was a bronze plaque with ancient lettering,” the Patriarch said. “It was brought to us in the early sixteenth century by the Lemba people of southern Africa, who had safeguarded it for many centuries before that. They took it from their own safe place because of the arrival of the Portuguese, and the fear that this and other treasures might be discovered and taken away. They brought it all the way to us because in their tradition it had been they who carried the Ark up the mountains to this place, to the cavern in the rock; they could think of no better place of safety for their plaque than here. Their tradition was that the plaque had been set up at the southern cape by the mariner who had brought the Ark from the north, who took them on board to help him with his task.”
“The Phoenician, the man with the braided beard in the tapestry,” Jack said, coursing with excitement. “His name was Hanno. Without looking again at that illustration, I can tell you that there’s a crude pictogram at the end showing two men carrying a chest on poles between them, surely a representation of the Ark. I know this because a little over a week ago, I was staring at that actual plaque, closer to it than I am to you now.”
“Where could you possibly have seen it?”
“About a hundred and twenty meters deep, inside a Second World War shipwreck off the west coast of Africa. Seeing that plaque was what set me on this trail to begin with. We found it embedded among a consignment of gold bars from South Africa, and had reason to believe that it had been Ahnenerbe loot. But now we know where they found it, everything is suddenly falling into place.”
“Can we see it?”
“You’ll see the images soon enough, splashed around the world, along with some incredible finds that our colleague Maurice Hiebermeyer has just told me about from his excavations at Carthage. One of them, amazingly, is a gorilla skin, just as Hanno described in his Periplus as having taken back to Carthage. What’s most astonishing is that it was flecked on the inside with gold in the shape of a box. I think it can only have been a cover for the Ark, removed on this mountaintop after the Ark had been taken away and concealed, perhaps inside the cavern in this very church.”
“Perhaps,” the Patriarch said, closing the folio. “Perhaps that story one day too will be told, of how a treasure that had been here for all those centuries, for a full two millennia before the plaque was placed inside with it, was taken out in secret and brought to its present place of waiting.”
Jack nodded. “Perhaps it will. But for now we’ve nearly come full circle on our journey, just as we now know Hanno must have done, circumnavigating Africa, coming here, taking the skins back to Carthage, fulfilling a bargain he had made with those who had entrusted him with their sacred cargo.”
The Patriarch put the folio on the table beside him. “Before you go, I have something I want to give you.” He gestured behind him, and his assistant gave him a package. He unwrapped it, taking out an object about six inches square inside a blue covering, and passed it over, putting his hands around Jack’s and the object as he spoke. “You will know not to open this. It’s made of acacia, what the Israelites called shittim wood. Many Ethiopians have one of these. We call it a tabot, a tablet of the Commandments. This is our Ark, and now it’s yours.”
He withdrew his hands, and Jack got up, carefully placing the tabot in his bag. “I’m very grateful to you. Thank you for seeing us today. You’ve filled gaps in an incredible story, one of the most amazing I’ve ever been involved with.”
“The tapestry will be a prize exhibit in the National Museum in Addis Ababa,” Zaheed said. “It will join other artifacts from the 1868 looting that are being returned. We’ll take it back with us in the helicopter.”
“Where are you going now?” the Patriarch said. “Zaheed tells me there might be trouble brewing off the Horn of Africa. You need to be very careful if you’re going to Somalia.”
Jack gave him a steely look. “Being on the trail of the Ark has set us on another trail, one involving a particularly insalubrious treasure hunter and the possibility of a cache of loot from seventy years ago that might include some lethal weapons material.”
“Is that Jack Howard the archaeologist speaking, or Jack Howard the former naval commando? Zaheed filled me in a little on your background.”
Jack held out his hand. “Both. I’ve enjoyed talking with you.”
“Perhaps, if you’re on the trail of those Nazis, you’ll come across some of those other lost artifacts from our museums and churches and be able to return them to us?”
“That would be my very great pleasure.”
Part 5
19
Almost exactly twenty-four hours later, Zaheed pulled up at a fenced compound on the outskirts of Mogadishu, the flat scrubland of the coastal plain on one side and the azure expanse of the northern Indian Ocean on the other. Jack was sitting in the jeep beside him and Costas was in the rear, having been picked up at the airport after his flight from England two hours previously. The compound was surrounded by rolls of razor wire and patrolled by pairs of Somali marines with Kalashnikovs, two of them having already approached the vehicle with their rifles at the ready.
“This is the new Somali navy operational command center,” Zaheed said, switching off the engine and unclipping his seat belt. “It’s used as a base for training marines, but you can see a couple of patrol boats in the harbor. Security’s tight because they’ve recently had to fend off an attack by the Al-Shabaab extremists, a drive-by shooting, and then a drive-in suicide bombing. Stay here while I do the formalities.”
He opened the car door, raised his hands to show the marines they were empty, and then got out, allowing them to surround the vehicle and frisk him. They gestured for Jack and Costas to do the same. An officer took Zaheed’s papers and Jack and Costas’s passports, scrutinizing them on the bonnet of the jeep. He spoke into a radio and asked Zaheed to follow him, and the two of them disappeared into the guardhouse at the entrance to the compound. A few minutes later they reappeared, Zaheed looking more relaxed, and the officer gestured for Jack and Costas to enter the compound. Zaheed spoke quickly to them on his way back to the jeep. “I’m leaving you two here while I go off to attend to some business. You’ll be seeing the base commander, Captain Ibrahim, the second in command of the Somali navy. He’s a good guy, one of the best. Where we go next really depends on what transpires here. Call me when you’re finished.”