“That’s reasonable. I’ll contact you tomorrow with a time for you to be shown the spots.” Luca paused. “It goes without saying that everything you’ve been told is confidential and cannot go beyond our ears.”
“Yes. As always.” Synthe couldn’t think of anything further to add and decided to cut his losses. “I’ll await your contact. Let me get going, so I can recall my team.”
Synthe saw no reason to drag the meeting out any longer. He needed time to think through a strategy that was tickling the periphery of his awareness.
“Thank you for your efforts, Colonel Synthe. I trust this new arrangement will work well for us all. Remember that it is temporary, and you will report directly to me again once this regrettable affair is concluded,” the Sentinel advised.
“I would completely understand if you wished to end our arrangement once this is done, given the loss of the Scroll,” Synthe offered. It was virtually mandatory for him to offer his resignation in light of the circumstances.
“We’ve discussed that, and agreed that, for the time being, we would be better served with you remaining in your position,” Luca said. The message was unmistakable. Luca had been discussing Synthe’s future with the Sentinel, had participated in deciding his destiny.
“Ah. Just so, then. Whatever best meets your needs, then. I shall await your instructions.”
“We’re going to Jordan?” Natalie asked.
“Yes. The Scroll doesn’t exactly give GPS coordinates, but as near as I can tell, it does the best you could expect for the 1200s. Bacon was a genius, that’s for sure. Part of the instructions say to cut several of the drawings here, and here, and here.” Steven pointed to the seemingly random blue lines running through four of the illustrations. “Now compare the new composite to this satellite image.” Steven had cut and pasted four of the illustrations together to fit, like a puzzle, into one coherent drawing. There was an oblong body of water with several markers surrounding it — a crescent moon, a star, a sideways Y, and finally, the labyrinth crest.
“It’s amazing,” Natalie observed. “I mean, it would be more helpful if we knew what the symbols meant, but this is a good start…”
“The star fits with the location of Machaerus, which was a fortified complex on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea. The Scroll specifically calls out the Dead Sea, so that would place the actual location of the fort approximately where it sits in the drawing, give or take…” Steven pointed at the screen, showing Natalie where he meant. “Machaerus is where John the Baptist was beheaded. It would have been a known landmark for centuries.”
“Kind of a grisly claim to fame,” Natalie said, shuddering involuntarily. Even with her familiarity of death, the vision of a bearded man having his head lopped off had stopping power.
“It is, but that makes it easier to pinpoint. There’s not much else I can find in that area that would correlate. The crescent references Job’s wife, which is also consistent with the region.”
“Turned into a pillar of salt, if I recall,” Natalie said.
“You know your Bible.”
“And the Y is?” Natalie asked.
“Looks to me like it sort of matches the Wadi Al Mujib,” Steven said.
“The what?”
“It’s a river that feeds into the Dead Sea. The Wadi Al Mujib. Which forks off east of the Dead Sea into the Wadi Al Mujib and the Wadi el Hidan. Wadi means river in Arabic. Or more specifically, it refers to a river bed, which may have water in the winter, but which usually dries up in the summer.”
“So it’s safe to say it gets hotter than hell there?” Natalie asked.
“That would be correct, this time of year. Although the Dead Sea does buffer the heat.”
“Okay, we have the fort, Job’s wife, and the Y.”
“And the Dead Sea.”
“Check. Then it should be a snap to find the Divine Whatever,” Natalie said. “So what’s for lunch?”
“The Divine Light — not to be pedantic. And no, not really a snap. Again, this is rugged terrain in a wasteland, and the map isn’t to scale. We have only a rough idea, along with some vague directions. Vague by today’s standards, but very precise by standards eight hundred years ago…”
“Not so easy?”
“Is anything in life?”
“You were when I slid up to you in the shower,” Natalie observed playfully.
“Your insulting tone with respect to my honor notwithstanding, what we have are some crude directions in Stadia, which are ancient units of measurement — from which the modern term ‘stadium’ comes. A Stadium is roughly six hundred feet,” Steven said.
“That sounds pretty precise.”
“Not really. Depending upon the language or the era, a foot varied in length. The two most likely as used in the Scroll are either 294 mm for an Olympic foot, or 308 mm for an Italic.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot. Wait. They based a foot on…different sized feet, literally?” Natalie asked.
“Yup. And it isn’t much, but when amplified by six hundred, we’re talking around thirty feet of difference per Stadium. Put another way, if you calculate using the Olympic measurement, a Stadium is around 577 feet, and if you use the Italic, it’s around 607 feet. And the directions, such as they are, tell us that we are to proceed thirty-five Stadia from the point where the Y forks, presumably up the Wadi el Hidan river bed. Once we’ve done so, we’re supposed to go five Stadia north, where supposedly the Divine Light is located. Buried. But when you start looking at the margins of error, just based on the two most common possible variations of what a foot is, you could be off by over a fifth of a mile on the Wadi, and by about a hundred fifty feet once we leave the river bed. It’s not impossible, but we’re talking a ton of terrain to cover. Add to that we have no idea what we’re looking for, and it gets ugly early.”
“Then we could be off by huge distances, and won’t know until we get there…” Natalie said softly.
“Correct. Trial and error. Which in the sun, in hundred-plus degree heat, is going to suck. We’re probably talking about many days of digging around for who knows what in miserable conditions. And that presumes that the Church can get permission. Jordan is predominantly Sunni Muslim, as in ninety percent, so it’s questionable how much cooperation they’ll get. Oh, and that’s a protected nature reserve, or at least parts of it are, from what I can tell online.”
“You’re making it sound less and less likely to succeed as you go along. Mister Buzz Kill. You’re bringing me down,” Natalie complained.
“It’s like everything. If you don’t know much about most things, they look easy. But the more you know about them, the harder they reveal themselves to be. Because most things are hard, or rather, are difficult. This won’t be any different, unfortunately. It’s just a good idea to have realistic expectations. Mine are optimistic, but pragmatic,” Steven said.
“Like I said. Buzz Kill.”
Three days later, Luca had the four passports in his hands. The Church had pulled strings with the Italian government and gotten Natalie and Steven one Italian passport each, and the Vatican had issued two Vatican City passports for travel during the search for the Light. Steven was now Arturo Stefano Crossetti, and Natalie was Natalia Pomore Salmagundi.
He also had the agreed-upon signed letters. And two million dollars were ready to be transferred to whatever account Steven chose. He finished typing a message to Steven’s e-mail address and pressed send. Now it was just a matter of transferring the cash and doing the handoff.