He burst past the pillars into the cave. Serena's body lay on the banks where he'd left her. He collapsed next to her, pulling her into his arms.
"I stopped him," he told her, though he knew she couldn't hear him. He looked at the hole above her blood-soaked breast and wept. "Oh, God, no. Please, no."
He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the torrent, the beeping of the timer counting down audibly to zero. A terrific quake shook the entire Temple Mount as the Flammenschwert exploded in the upper chamber. Chunks of rock began to fall around him, making huge splashes in the river.
Holding Serena in his arms, he jumped into the rushing waters as flames burst out of the Gihon shaft. Sheets of fire flickered like waves in the air above the river, illuminating Serena's face as if she were an angel beneath the surface.
As the current carried them both away, Conrad kissed her goodbye with his last breath. The river sucked them down a dark tunnel. He tried to hold on to her, but her hand slipped away. He shouted out to her in the water, but then his head hit a rock and everything went black.
54
It was just after three o'clock, and General Gellar was praying at the Western Wall, his head covered with his yarmulke and his shoulders draped with his silk tallith, when the explosion rocked the Temple Mount.
There were screams and shouts, and he looked up at the Dome of the Rock to behold the pillar of fire he had dreamed of for so long. But it didn't come, and the shaking began to die down like a small earthquake. There were no aftershocks.
Confused and disturbed by what this could mean, he slowly made his way across the crowds in the plaza who were engaged in animated discussion over what had just happened.
As he approached the curb, a white van pulled up and a door slid open to reveal a bleeding Commander Sam Deker and several armed Yamam. Gellar tried to turn but felt something prick his neck as he blacked out.
Several hours later, Deker and his team stormed the labs of the Israeli subsidiary of Midas Minerals amp; Mining at the Tefen Industrial Park near the Lebanese border. After the raid, he met with his U.S. counterparts in one of the theaters on the corporate campus. Marshall Packard was sitting on a chair on the stage, reading over a report with a tall, thin woman who introduced herself as Wanda Randolph.
"Hell, Deker, this month alone they had engineers from Intel, Siemens, Exxon, and MIT visiting the R amp; D center to learn about this new water detection and extraction technology," Packard told him. "How could the Israelis not know Gellar had an ownership interest in the company?"
"Many members of the government and military have similar arrangements with the companies here."
Packard frowned. "You secured the rest of those metal pellets in the labs?"
"Destroyed." Deker held his ground. "I trusted neither my superiors nor you to properly dispose of them."
"That's unfortunate," Packard said. "Just one of those little fire beads could have unlocked Atlantean technology."
Deker said nothing.
"What are you going to say about Gellar in your report to the Israeli prime minister?"
"That he died a hero of Israel, preventing what could have been a debilitating strike on the Temple Mount. Had it succeeded, it would have triggered a war in which Israel would have prevailed, of course, but at the cost of many lives."
"What about the globes? I don't suppose they could have possibly survived."
"If they did, I wouldn't tell you," Deker said. "I'm more concerned about Yeats and Serghetti. Any word on their fate?"
Packard looked somber. "No," he said. "But wherever they are, I think it's time we finally leave them the hell alone."
That evening Deker returned to the Western Wall and looked for the slip of paper with the prayer on it that Gellar had inserted between the massive rocks. It was taboo, but Deker wasn't much of a devout Jew.
Using what he had seen from the surveillance footage, he found what he was reasonably certain was the prayer.
Come let us go up the mountain of
the Lord, that we may walk the
paths of the Most High.
And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares,
and our spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation-
Neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the
Lord of Hosts has spoken.
It was a good prayer, Deker thought. He was sure he had heard it somewhere before in his childhood. Seeing the Jews and Christians around him praying, and hearing the distant call of the minaret for Muslims to pray as well, he decided to repeat that prayer as his way of saying kaddish for the souls of Conrad Yeats and Serena Serghetti.
55
It was already hot at ten a.m. on Easter Sunday when Reka Bressler, a grad student from Hebrew University's Orion Center for the Study of Dead Sea Scrolls, led her American tour group past a stone marker that said sea level to the rocks of the Dead Sea over four hundred yards below.
The desolate area was the lowest point on earth, an otherworldly landscape of sheer cliffs, caves, and rocks around the waters. It was believed to be the site of several biblical cities, including Sodom and Gomorrah, or rather, what was left of them. Indeed, it looked like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, and the smell of sulfur didn't help.
But the water of the Dead Sea was supposed to possess therapeutic powers. Already a couple from her group had jumped in to test the salty sea's legendary buoyancy. One American, settling comfortably in the water, looked like he was reclining on an invisible lawn chair as he scanned the Jerusalem Post.
That was when Reka saw the body of a fully clothed man washed up on the beach. He was clearly no tourist. She cursed and ran down the shore to him and turned him over.
His face was caked with blood. His head must have struck a rock somewhere. She bent down, placed two fingers on his neck, and felt a faint pulse. She pressed on his stomach, and he spat up water. She was about to give him mouth-to-mouth when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"That's okay, I've got him."
Reka rose and saw a woman in torn clothes with a scorched medallion on her chest. There was something familiar and ethereal about her. But the footprints behind her proved that she was just as flesh-and-blood as her companion. "But you look worse than he does," Reka said.
The woman smiled. "I'll be sure to tell him. He'll like that. You may want to get back to your group. I think there's a man under that hand waving a newspaper above the surface of the water."
"Harah," Reka muttered, and started running down the beach.
Serena held Conrad's head in her arms as he coughed, blinked his eyes open, and looked at her and then at the seemingly godforsaken place around them.
"This can't be hell, because you're here," he said.
She saw him staring at the scorched medallion hanging from her neck. Her Shekel of Tyre had been sheared in half by the bullet it had deflected, searing her chest with a cauterized flesh wound in the shape of a crescent moon. "River of Life, Conrad."
He sat up and wrapped his arms around her. "Thank you, God."
She wiped the tears from her eyes, and then she removed the medallion from her neck. "Well, I'm not returning to Rome."
Conrad looked at her. "Where are you going?"
"Wherever you go, Conrad."
"You sure you want to do this?"
"I do."
"And then?"
"We can love God, serve others, be fruitful, and multiply."