The equipment was made up of two collapsible camping shovels, a pair of bright yellow, handheld Lowrance Safari GPS units and two very-high-end Garrett metal finders, smaller mine-detector-style versions of the big Garrett metal detector gates used in airports and secure facilities. They were lightweight and computerized.
Holliday sat down on the neatly made bunk against the port-side bulkhead and waited for Meg to join him. They were sitting in the bow now and the sliding, mild roller-coaster movement of the Deryldene D on the light swell was more pronounced. Meg's color deepened and she put a hand on her stomach.
"What do you want to check?" she said, obviously irritated. "The batteries are fully charged and the salesman calibrated the detectors for copper, bronze and iron as well as gold and silver. Those are the most likely metals the ark would have been sheathed in."
"I wanted to talk with you privately," answered Holliday.
"About what?" Meg swallowed. "And make it quick. I need some fresh air as soon as possible."
"All right. One quick question. When we were in that bar where we met Gallant you said you knew where the ark was buried. How is that possible since you didn't know about Sable Island until a few days ago?"
"My, my, aren't you the suspicious one," said Meg. She swallowed again and closed her eyes briefly as a wave of nausea hit her.
"Call it professional curiosity," said Holliday.
"Okay," she said and nodded. "To satisfy your curiosity." She took a deep shuddering breath to control her seasickness. "Hopefully it won't bruise that delicate male ego of yours, but I'm a historian as well, and sometimes I can figure out puzzles too."
"What puzzle?" Holliday asked.
"The painting in Prague. The one by Cranach. You couldn't figure out the six monks around the well, remember?"
"I'm with you so far."
"You told me there's a freshwater lake on Sable Island, right?"
"Lake Wallace. There's a spring somewhere but it's mostly rainwater runoff, which is why the water level rises and falls so dramatically, at least according to that book I read."
"But would it have been there in the time of the Blessed Juliana and Saint-Clair?"
"Presumably."
"Don't you see? Lake Wallace is the well," said Meg, managing a faint smile of triumph.
"And the six monks?"
"Sext," answered Meg.
"Pardon?"
"It's the most important of the canonical hours," explained Meg. "It's even sacred to the Jews. Sext is the sixth hour of the day. Originally sext was seen as dawn, but by the Blessed Juliana's day and the advent of clocks, prime, the first hour of the day, was arbitrarily set at six a.m. and sext officially became noon, the time Christ was crucified. Sext was also St. Benedict's most sacred time for prayer, and St. Benedict was the patron saint of the Templars. That's where Jean de Saint-Clair and the Blessed Juliana hid their holy treasure. The six o'clock position on the face of a sundial or a clock. We'll find the True Ark at the six o'clock position on the shore of Lake Wallace."
"Well, I'll be damned," whispered Holliday.
26
Dr. Rafi Wanounou, a professor of medieval archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sat under the fly tent that served as his office, sweating profusely and doing paperwork, most of which was scattered over the rough plywood table in front of him.
Through the open end of the tent he could see the entire archaeological site of the 4000 B.C. cult temple that had served the nomadic tribes passing through the desert. Beyond the ruins of the old temple where his students were laboring like busy little ants under the broiling sun, Rafi could see the white salt rime on the beaches and the blue-green expanse of the Dead Sea.
If he squinted he could faintly see Jordan ten miles away on the other side, and with a pair of good binoculars he could even make out the five-hundred-foot block of halite that was usually referred to as Mount Sodom.
It was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and it was almost time to call in the kids for lunch and a hydrating break and maybe even a trip to one of the springs surrounding the nearby Ein Gedi Oasis for a swim. Rafi sighed. The Chalcolithic period of Hebrew history was hardly his area of expertise, but like the rest of his colleagues in the department he had to lead his fair share of field trips to give the students experience doing site work.
Rafi sighed again; he was also worried about Peggy. She was only in her first trimester but he was already fretting over her. He had even been considering making the arduous hundred-kilometer journey back to Jerusalem later in the afternoon, even though Ein Gedi was hardly within commuting distance. Fifty miles on secondary desert roads in Israel wasn't like the same distance on a freeway in the United States. On the other hand, Peggy was worth it; in fact, meeting and falling in love with Peggy Blackstock had been the best thing that had ever happened to him; even his mother thought so, even though he'd married a shiksa who hadn't changed her name when they got married. He smiled; convincing Reyna Wanounou of anything was a small miracle, even his father said so.
Rafi reached down to the cooler underneath his table and pulled out a plastic bottle of Neviot spring water and twisted off the cap. He took a long swallow and then another. Peggy wasn't used to the extreme heat of an Israeli summer and that was worrying him, too. He grinned. It was a fundamental part of the Jewish psyche to worry about one thing or another. Presumably Peggy hadn't reached that part of the conversion process yet.
He heard the sound of a vehicle coming down the approach road to the temple site. There was a heavy note to the engine, more like the sound of a truck. Rafi slipped on his old Serengeti Driver sunglasses and stood up. He went to the open end of the tent and stood in the blinding sunlight. He watched as the vehicle came down the winding approach road. It was a Humvee in mottled desert camouflage. The Humvee was Israeli Defense Force.
The squat, boxy, armored all-purpose vehicle pulled up beside the fly tent. It was an M1145 model, the one the U.S. Army was using to replace the original version. Whatever branch of the service it came from they had pull in the motor pool. As far as Rafi knew there weren't more than a handful in the country. During his mandatory stint in the military they were still using Jeeps.
An officer climbed out of the passenger seat and two grunts got out of the back. They were all wearing identical tan uniforms but the officer had three olive branch pips on his green shoulder tabs; a full colonel. The grunts had the triple stripes of staff sergeants on their sleeves. All three were wearing the dark green berets of Military Intelligence Command.
The colonel had a holstered Desert Eagle pistol on his belt; the sergeants both carried futuristic- looking Tavor assault rifles. The colonel approached Rafi. The man looked to be in his late fifties, his square face seamed and lined, the hair at his close-cropped temples grizzled salt and pepper. The two grunts took up positions on either side of him and slightly behind. Their eyes shifted like wolves', always in motion. They were the colonel's bodyguard; whoever he was, the colonel was high on the food chain.
"My name is Abraham Ben- El'azar. I am with IDF Intelligence," said the colonel. "I am looking for Professor Rafi Wanounou."
"That would be me," answered Rafi. "What can I do for you?" he asked, curious.
"It's your wife, Dr. Wanounou. I'm afraid she has been kidnapped."
Peggy Blackstock walked slowly along Mahane Yehuda Street in central Jerusalem, alternately taking photographs and shopping for dinner and anything else that looked good in the shuk Machaneh Yehuda, the city's famous open-air market. She'd already picked up some fresh dates, pistachios and a bag of meat-and-potato-filled "cigars," the Moroccan version of pierogies and one of Rafi's favorites.