by Rob Jones
“Still not with you, Ben.”
“Wait a minute,” Hunter said. “Seven churches as in the Seven Churches of Asia?”
Lewis smiled. “Yes, you know them?”
“Sure, they come up from time to time in the archaeological world.”
Lewis laughed. “Small world – except they’re also called the Seven Churches of Revelation, or the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse.”
Jodie shuddered. “There’s that word again.”
“Indeed there is,” Lewis said, his tone firm and sombre. “This is serious stuff. As serious as it gets. John says Revelation 23 and the Tabula Dei are hidden in one of the churches.”
“We’re getting closer,” Blanco said.
“Maybe,” Lewis said. “But there’s a problem. All Seven Churches of the Apocalypse and their locations are mentioned in Revelation, but the problem is I can’t work out which specific church John is referring to in this scroll.”
“Which shall henceforth be known to the world as the Patmos Codex,” Hunter said.
“Whatever we call it,” said Lewis. “I can’t crack it.”
“Not yet,” Amy said. “But you will.”
He sighed, uncertain he could do what she needed him to. “Like I said, I haven’t worked out from this exactly which church Book 23 and this Tabula Dei is hidden in, but it’s definitely in one of the Seven Churches, and they’re all in Turkey.”
“Good work, Ben,” Amy said.
“Just think about that,” said Lewis with his usual wonder. “Somewhere in one of the Seven Churches of the Revelation is a lost book of the Bible.”
A wave of nervous excitement rippled through the small team as they climbed back inside the helicopter. Hunter fired up the engine and moments later they were flying up into the sky. Amy and Blanco gave each other a look. The man from Brooklyn asked, “You guys really think we’re going to find it?”
Hunter pushed the cyclic to the left and the chopper swung around to the north, a wry smile lighting up his face. “I guess there’s only one way to find out. Let’s fly to Turkey.”
Amy got out her phone.
“Who are you calling?” Blanco asked.
“Jim. After what I saw happen to Neverov and the Wolf Pack on that superyacht, we’re going to need some back-up before we go any further. He has army and air force contacts all over the world. With some luck, he might be able to have someone get a team together.”
*
Alexios Kandarian looked out at the devastation on the Tiamat’s forward main deck with a deep dissatisfaction. Belisarius was down there, and he watched the enormous man padding around, directing Brothers in their efforts to clear away chunks of helicopter machinery and put out burning aviation fuel. Two men were dragging the corpse of one of the Russian soldiers to the portside deck rail. He watched them heave the body over the rail and throw it in the sea.
All this destruction, he thought. So much wickedness. Evil everywhere, as weak men and women sought something they couldn’t possibly understand. He turned his thoughts away from the chaos and focused on the True Light that only the Brotherhood of the Falling Star truly knew. On the ancient secret inside the Ark that only the very highest in the Brotherhood knew and understood.
Below, Belisarius turned from his work on the deck and walked up the short flight of steps into the wrecked, smoking bridge house. Seeing his most loyal devotee covered in soot and sweat, he was pleased the Russians who had committed this atrocity were all dead, but there was still revenge to be had on the HARPA team.
“We’re almost there, sir.”
“Good.”
“The Brothers are ready for anything.”
Kandarian smiled, his thoughts were turning to a small church in rural Turkey. There, inside a hidden sanctuary deep below its foundations, was a high altar. On the high altar was a jewel-encrusted tabernacle, and inside the locked tabernacle was what all these sinners sought so badly. It had already cost the Wolf Pack their lives, and now it would cost HARPA theirs, too. His smile broadened when he thought about such a small, modest thing that could drive so many weak souls to their deaths.
The Tabula Dei.
He turned to Belisarius. “And the stars of heaven fell unto earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”
“Are you thinking of any particular star, Eminence?”
Kandarian turned to his disciple. “They have the fourth statue and the scroll, Belisarius.”
The young giant looked confused. “But how? My men destroyed Neverov and all his men.”
“We were attacked on two fronts, my loyal servant.”
A frown darkened Belisarius’s face. “Hunter and Fox.”
The billionaire nodded. “Yes. They raided my stateroom in the middle of the gunfight up on the main deck. They locked me in my safe. Fools didn’t know I have a safety release in there, but they were gone by the time I got out.”
“But you have always taught that the Fourth Being will reveal the path to the Ark!”
“This is true. If they are able to decipher the scroll, it will eventually lead them to the Ark.”
“Then we must stop them!” Belisarius said.
“Calm, calm. We will stop them. The place they seek will not give itself up so easily, old friend. We have time to get there first and protect it from their wicked plundering.”
“But the location is known only to you, Eminence!”
Kandarian walked out onto the smoking deck. Loyal Brothers were still putting out spot fires and clearing up the detritus from the battle. “I know thy works, and where thou dwellest…” he said quietly. “Even where Satan’s seat is.”
Belisarius understood at once. A look of disquiet appeared on his face. “Your Eminence has told me the location of the Tabula Dei.”
Kandarian was unfazed. “It is time you knew, Belisarius.”
“But if the HARPA team find the Tabula Dei, it will certainly lead them to the Ark!”
“Yes, Brother. Yes, it will. That is why we must stop them. Gather the men at once and brief them. We are to return to Leros where we will board the plane and fly immediately. Has the Tiamat sustained much serious damage?”
He shook his head. “Nothing under the waterline or to the engines. We can reach the full seventy knots and be in Leros in less than twenty minutes.”
“Then take us out to sea, Belisarius. When Hunter and Fox reach their destination we will be waiting for them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hours later, as an eastern Aegean dusk blushed the sky a deep vermillion, their helicopter touched down in Izmir’s Cigli Airport. The Anatolian city was home to over four million people and the third largest metropolis in Turkey but tonight its most important feature was the small, dusty statue and its mysterious scroll, sitting on a table in a fast food restaurant.
Hunched over the scroll with a magnifying glass, Dr Ben Lewis was desperately searching for some kind of clue to refine his earlier work. That had led them this far, to Izmir, but it wasn’t enough, and as Amy and Quinn went shopping in the airport for gauze pads, alcohol and bandages to patch up their wounds, the young historian worked hard, determined to make their stop in the city as fleeting as possible.
When Amy and Quinn returned with the medical supplies, the HARPA deputy director sat next to him and sighed. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“What about you, Max?”
“Yes,” he said, unwrapping a burger. “While Ben has been studying the scroll, I’ve been looking at the inscription on the man statue. Thanks to having Kostas’s previous translation in my toolkit, I was able to translate it, and it’s fairly straight-forward. The inscription on this statue reads, For only then will they find Satan’s throne.”
“So now we have all four verses,” Amy said, referring to her phone. “I am the man between the town and the stairs, and I say to those who seek Heaven’s Falling Star – They must ask the Lion, the Ox, the Man and th
e Eagle – For only then will they find Satan’s Throne – and the last Word of God will unleash the Apocalypse and strike terror into Man.”
With her words hanging in the air, a grim silence descended on the team.
“Mean anything to you, Ben?” Hunter asked.
Lewis looked up from his work, vaguely annoyed at the distraction. He was met by the sight of Max Hunter leaning back in a red plastic chair, mouth full of burger.
“As a matter of fact, yes, but I still need to translate the scroll. There’s much more information on here.”
“Too bad,” Hunter said.
“I’d probably work faster without any interruptions.”
Hunter took another bite of the burger. “Makes sense. I know I do.”
Blanco and Jodie returned from the counter with two more trays of food. Cheeseburgers wrapped in greasy paper, little cartons of salty fries and large cardboard cups of bubbling, ice cold coke.
“Here,” Jodie said, placing a burger and a coke next to Lewis. “Enjoy.”
The former marine looked aghast. “Whoa, not near the scroll, Jodie!”
“Sorry.”
“This could lead us to a missing book of the Bible! It doesn’t get any more important than this. Revelation 23 and the Map of God! So, here’s a rule. We don’t put blue raspberry slushies within twelve inches of the Patmos Codex.”
“Sorry, again.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He pushed them away, and went back to the dusty, crumbling papyrus and faded ink. “I just need some more time on this. Quiet time.”
“Maybe a fast food joint in the middle of an airport wasn’t such a good idea,” Blanco said.
“It’s all we have,” Amy said. “Sorry.”
Lewis turned another leaf and moved his magnifying glass up to the top for another search of another page. “Forget about it.”
“How much more to go?” Hunter asked.
Lewis set down the magnifying glass, sighed and turned imploring eyes to the English archaeologist. “Imagine if I asked you a bunch of stupid questions when you were trying to study one of your old pots.”
Hunter scrunched up his burger wrapper and nodded. “I can see how irritating that would be.”
“Thank you.”
“And I prefer artifacts or relics to ‘old pots’, by the way.”
“Fine.”
Lewis returned to the codex.
Hunter said, “It’s just that it looks like you’re nearly finished and time is getting on. Neverov and the Wolf Pack might be dead and out of the picture, but Kandarian and the Brotherhood of the Falling Star are well and truly still in it.”
“I get that,” Lewis said, turning the final page. A second later, he rolled up the codex, put the magnifying glass down and took a long drink of coke. Everyone in the team stared blankly, each waiting for him to say something.
“Well?” Amy said at last. “Do we know which church, or not?”
Lewis took his time with the coke. Then he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “The thing is there’s a sequence to the Seven Churches. When they’re mentioned in Revelation, it’s in specific verses, and that gives them an order of precedence.”
“Which is?” Amy asked.
Lewis paused for a moment and looked up to the ceiling, counting something off on his right hand as he muttered to himself. “Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”
“And how does that help us?” Quinn asked.
“Don’t you see?” Lewis said, beaming. “On the scroll, one of the seven stars is bigger and brighter than the others.”
“The fifth one along!” Amy said.
“Does that mean we’re going to Sardis?” Blanco said. “That was the fifth church you mentioned.”
“Close, but no cigar,” Lewis said.
“I don’t get it,” Amy said. “I was certain I was right.”
“You are,” Hunter said, turning to Lewis. “You want to tell her, or should I?”
“You know?” Amy said.
He gave a self-effacing shrug. “I thought I did, but after what Ben’s just said, I know I do.”
Lewis laughed. “John of Patmos wrote Revelation in Koine Greek, which was written from right to left like Hebrew. This means to him, the burning star isn’t the fifth one along but the third one. He’s trying to tell us that Revelation 23 and the Tabula Dei is in the third church he wrote about in the Book of Revelation.”
“Pergamum,” Blanco said.
“Satan’s seat,” Hunter said. “Another UNESCO site.”
“Whoa,” Quinn said. “That’s some deductive reasoning right there.”
“Max?” Amy asked. “Have you been to this place?”
He nodded. “Yes and no. I’m aware of the site in western Turkey. I traveled there once during my doctorate, but I don’t know it well.”
“John says there’s a passageway beneath the ruins of the theater there,” said Lewis. “Under an archway.”
“So how do we get there?” Quinn asked.
Hunter pointed out of the window at the helicopter they had escaped from the Tiamat in. “We will be travelling by Air Kandarian.” As they looked down at Kandarian’s luxury helicopter, they saw a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk swoop over the end of the airport and touch down beside their Eurocopter. “And it looks like Director Gates has come through again – the cavalry has arrived.”
Amy’s eyes brightened as she watched the twin-engine military utility chopper powering down on the apron. “They’re from Incirlik Air Base. There’s a USAF complement there of over five thousand airmen and a contingent of Special Forces who use the site as a forward base for regional missions.”
“And tonight, that mission is raiding the Third Church of the Apocalypse,” said Quinn.
*
They quickly boarded the executive Eurocopter and patched up their wounds while flying north to the town of Bergama, the modern name for Pergamum. Travelling at just under three hundred miles per hour, the chopper made a low pass over the town’s terracotta roofs and busy streets before swooping up onto the large hill to the north. They landed next to the famous ancient Ruins of Pergamum, dating back through Roman times all the way to the Byzantine era.
The chopper carrying the Delta Operators landed thirty yards to their right. Franko, Milton and Schiff were first out, followed by Vranos and Pozniak. Amy spoke with Franko for a few moments and then the five of them fanned out and created a security perimeter around the site at the top of the hill.
Gates had not spoken with the Turkish authorities to clear the flight through their airspace or conduct the search at the site. Relations between Greece and Turkey were strained, and Turkish airstrikes against its Syrian neighbor had also ratcheted up tensions in the region.
The recent decision by the American president to remove Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program in response to buying the Russian S-400 air defense system had moved Ankara further away, and no one wanted to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Gates knew the likelihood of giving a covert team with military backup access to the site was next to zero so he went by one of his favorite sayings.
It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.
In the gathering darkness, Amy pulled a night vision monocular from the bag slung over her shoulder and scanned the ancient ruins ahead of them. She saw no sign of any body warmth or movement, but then Hunter nudged her in the ribs.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Down there.”
The former British Army major pointed down at a line of vehicles. They were snaking into the town in a valley formed by the bottom of the hill and another lower hill to the west. The road came from the north, and driving along it at cruising speed were three black Humvees heading into the town.
“You think it’s Kandarian?”
“Maybe. They might have flown into Edremit in the north. That would explain the direction of travel.” The corner of his
mouth turned up into a sly grin. “Know anyone else who drives a fleet of Humvees?”
Blanco walked over to them. “The Delta Ops are in place, Amy.”
“Good,” she said. “And it looks like we’re going to need them. Look down there.”
Blanco followed her pointing arm to the fleet of black Humvees as they twisted out of sight in the northern reaches of the ancient town. “The Brotherhood?”
“Gotta be,” she said. “Although Hunter thinks it might be Madonna on tour.”
Hunter turned to face Blanco’s frown. “I did not say that.”
“Sure you did, champ,” Amy said. “How long till they get up here?”
“They have to drive less than two miles,” Hunter said. “They’ll be up here in less than ten minutes, but then they have the Delta boys to play with. They should buy us the time we need to get in and find Rev 23 and the Map of God. First, we need to blow a large hole in the side of this mountain. Lewis reckons the scroll says there’s a passageway located under what’s left of the theater.”
“Isn’t that criminal damage?” Quinn asked.
“Yes,” Hunter said, “But what lurks beneath is much more valuable, don’t you think, dear?”
“I’m not your dear, Max.”
“Just an expression, love.”
“Or your love.”
“And I’m not your love, either.”
Hunter and Blanco took explosives from the Special Forces chopper and padded over to the archway at the top of the theater and set them up. Speaking into a palm mic, Amy briefed the special ops men. “Three Humvees on the way, I repeat three Humvees. We’re probably looking at maybe ten or twelve men. Has to be Kandarian and his Brotherhood.”
“Copy that,” Franko said. “We’ll keep them busy.”
The explosion shook the ground with a deep thud and sprayed chunks of masonry and rocky ground into the air. Shielding their heads with their arms as the rocks and stones and mud rained down all over them, the team waited until the air had cleared before breaking cover and running over to the theater’s flagstone floor.
