He waited, taking shallow breaths, hardly breathing at all. He needed to seem dead to the invaders, and it was the only kind of breath he could manage. One of his lungs might have collapsed. He wasn’t sure. The flow of blood from his wounds had not stemmed, weakening him almost beyond hope. Almost.
The impression of light he’d detected through his closed lids was suddenly gone. Sounds of concrete on concrete above him, echoing in the small chamber. They had sealed him in.
God, he prayed, give me strength for just a little while longer. They’ll be back. I need to do one final act for You. If it’s Your will, help me. There could be only one reason the Lord hadn’t yet taken him.
He opened his eyes, just a crack. The darkness was so complete he had to blink a couple of times to be sure his eyes were open. Everyone was gone. He waited to see if his vision would adjust, but there was no light to latch on to. He rolled from the position he’d held during those eternal minutes after regaining consciousness. The fire in his chest spread to every corner of his body, even the tips of his fingers. He opened his mouth to scream and shoved the heel of his right hand into his mouth. It had not been long since they’d left. They may still be above him. Quiet. Have to be quiet.
What did he think he could do? If they came back, they would search the room, look for signs of the treasure. If they were diligent, they would find what they were looking for.
Using his elbows and arms, he pulled himself across the floor, toward the opposite side of the altar. The gun in his coat pocket pressed into his stomach, dragging along beneath him. It was no use to him now. Maybe that was a good thing.
He had to take the Covenant from this place. Ruth Lieberman had shown him the compartment in which it lay. He shifted again; the fire burned through him. Even if this motion didn’t kill him, what he was planning to do most certainly would. He was not a priest. He was not a minister or rabbi. He was wearing Levi’s, but he didn’t think that counted.
Drag.
His chest felt heavier on the right side and he listed in that direction. It felt like a sack of water had been shoved inside him. He hoped this short trek across the room wouldn’t cause his other lung to fill with blood.
Was he forcing himself along only to die at the end? Ruth had been adamant about following God’s law. He mustn’t touch them. No, the rule was he mustn’t touch the Ark. There was nothing saying anything about the tablets of the Commandments themselves. He’d find out soon enough.
Two more lengths across the floor. His left foot had drifted outward and now hit the base of the altar. That meant the majority of him had already moved past it. He was close. Dust smeared his face, coating his mouth and nose. He wanted to cough, or sneeze. Doing that would probably be the last thing he ever did.
Lord Jesus, help me. Forgive me for what I’m about to do. Make me a priest of your teaching. A minister for these last few moments of my life, so that I might end my oath to your Father by serving him in this last way.
His head bumped into the wall. His left hand became caught underneath his body. His fingers opened, and he felt the small hole just above his belly. He panicked. I’ve been shot. I should be dead. God, please.
He worked his wet hand free and felt along the wall. Focus. The wall was smooth, caked in dust. Cobwebs of it stuck to his fingers. He wiped them on the wall and felt for—there! Three small indentations. He felt further and could make out the outline of the brick, pushing aside more dust from the cracks.
He could barely gasp in enough oxygen with all the dust, and was now going to try to pull this cinder block free from its resting place; move it from the spot where it had lain for almost one hundred years, with a hole in his chest and probably his back. One working lung.
Vincent laughed, then caught himself. He couldn’t risk that first and fatal cough. Still, it energized him. This was not how he thought it would end. Almost dead, lying on the floor of John Solomon’s grave, planning on pulling a forty-pound cement block from the wall.
Entry 823, he thought. This one’s a doozy.
He worked three fingers into the indentation. The inward curve of the holes allowed him a reach up to the knuckles. A good grip, well-designed by the caretaker before the caretaker before Ruth. He’d been a mason, that one; and, he assumed, a good man. At the very least, a good mason.
Here goes nothing.
He moved away from the wall, rolling onto his side and ignoring the resurgence of pain and fire inside, and pulled.
The stone slid free a couple of inches. He pulled his fingertips out to feel the distance. More than he’d expected. It gave him incentive to try again.
Gripping again with his fingers, Vincent moved himself back, pulled and rolled, using his body’s momentum. The stone followed. He didn’t check on the progress, but shimmied away and pulled again. And again. His head began to tingle. He closed his eyes. The lack of any change in the blackness gave him vertigo and he opened them again.
After a rest, Vincent slowly felt along the block, further, further. His fingers reached around and touched the far side.
It was out. He could see, vaguely, like an afterglow of a flashbulb, a steady green light beyond the brick. It illuminated nothing; in fact, it was only there if he turned his head to look with his peripheral vision. But it was there.
He rolled onto his other side. The bag that was once his lung shifted with him. He fell flat to the floor and moaned loudly, not caring if anyone heard him. He lay there and sobbed. It wasn’t the pain—it had all faded to a steady throbbing ache, everywhere—but the mental image of what his body was going through. The fear that a wrong move would cause it to open up and fall apart.
Just a little more, Lord, and if it’s Your will you can take me home with You forever.
He moved forward until his head bumped the cinder block. He had to push it aside a few inches, felt its sharp edges scrape across his skin. He touched the wall until the wall was no longer there. He couldn’t pause. Lord I am your servant, and in this moment your priest.
He hoped.
He reached inside.
And closed his fingers around old, coarse cloth. The word sackcloth came to mind, but he knew that was from years of Bible reading. He didn’t even know what sackcloth felt like. This bag had the rough texture of a potato sack, maybe thicker.
The sacred tablets of the Covenant had been separated from the Ark for centuries. The Ark had been lost a long time ago. But it had housed these very tablets—the second unblemished set carried down by Moses from Sinai, the Lord’s mountain—for longer than any historian imagined. In the end, according to Vincent’s own feeble translations of his strongbox’s contents, the Ark was sacrificed to a group of Ammonites who had come too close to victory in the Greek capital of Constantinople. There hadn’t been time to construct a decoy. The caretaker at the time had been forced to leave it for discovery while its contents were taken far, far away.
The ironic part, however, was that the Ark never was discovered. If the enemy had possession of it, there would be no need for this elaborate duplicate in Hillcrest. The old Greek caretaker—a bishop, if Vincent’s translations were correct—had written of his hopes to return to the site and learn of the Ark’s fate. Vincent never discovered if he’d ever succeeded. If the bishop ever managed to return, he mustn’t have found it. Instead, God’s written Covenant with His people moved around the world in the rough hewn sack at Vincent’s fingertips, or one very much like it.
To end up in the unsteady grasp of a middle aged man dying of a gunshot wound. But he wasn’t dead, not yet.
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered, and pulled the bag free. The stone tablets slid silently from the hole. Compared to the cinder block, this weight was manageable.
He risked a closer touch, coarse fabric between smooth stone surface and his fingers, feeling for any damage. They felt intact. An electric tingle worked along his fingers, up his arm. Vincent pulled his hand away. Its energy, this close, was like a lamp against his face. Best not to a
ctually touch them for too long. The sensation gave him the willies. The glow was there, indistinct at the edge of his vision, offering no tangible light in the room but still... there.
He rested, and considered. The tablets were just under a yard in length. Two yard-long slabs of stone which together seemed to weigh at least as much as the cinder block which had given him so much trouble. And he had to get them out of this place.
He began the long trek toward the bottom of the ladder, moving forward, dragging the sack to his side, moving a little further, repeating the process. After a couple of misdirections, he found the rungs.
He wanted to rest, to sleep, but knew he would never wake up. They’d be back soon. They were bound to be. Where would he go? At once, he knew that he could not hide from these people. Even if he lived long enough to find a place, he was going to leave too obvious a trail.
He’d go to the only place that made sense. If he died there, before or after they found him, at least he would do so in God’s house. It was the most he could do. Even then, pushing aside the concrete slab above him aside would be like moving a mountain.
He would make it to the church. Then it was up to God, and maybe Nathan Dinneck. If the young minister was still alive.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Nathan was alive, and struggling for some plan to get them out of this mess. Josh hadn’t turned against them out of any sense of free will. Quinn’s hypnotic trick could be used, with apparent ease, against anyone.
Almost anyone. Nathan wondered again about the incident in the store that morning. Quinn’s voice had been a third arm reaching for him, almost taking hold near the end. But he’d resisted, if by no other way than leaning on his faith and finding a sliver of strength. Was that it? He frowned on others mentioning faith as some sort of magical force field. It wasn’t, at least not in the way that people liked to think. It wouldn’t stop a bus if you chose to test it in the middle of traffic.
God didn’t like to be tested. Nathan had to remind himself that he’d almost lost the battle this morning. His defenses had been knocked down when he’d seen the painting. Quinn had pounced on that weakness.
Faith—not in oneself, but in God alone—was the only way to resist the devil. That was whom this man represented. Even so, Quinn either wasn’t able to control him now in the same way as the others, or chose not to. He controlled Nathan by his power over Josh and Elizabeth. What about his father? Art Dinneck was more faithful a Christian than most people Nathan knew. Art falling so far from the church was no more realistic than Josh aiming a gun and shooting a man in cold blood.
If Nathan had become prey to Quinn this morning, perhaps the same was true for his father. Maybe Quinn was threatening his mother, holding her safety against Art’s cooperation.
The man sitting behind the wheel was crazed. Obsessed was a better word. Nathan never thought he was afraid to die. Such an event was only the next logical step toward spending eternity with Christ. Regardless, the instinct for survival was strong. If not for himself, then for Josh and Elizabeth.
The influx of questions dogged his thoughts and kept him from focusing on the present. He was crowded in the back seat of Quinn’s sedan with the artificial Ark beside him. Even in the light of passing streetlights, the craftsmanship of the box was solid, but such a startling contrast to what Nathan had first seen.
He sat back and watched Josh, who, in turn, watched him over the back of the passenger seat. Nathan stared at his friend, focusing on his eyes. God give me the strength to reach him. Open your eyes, Josh. Use your mind and see what’s going on.
Josh reacted, a little. The gun resting on the top of the seat lowered in his grip. His gaze softened.
“Mister Everson, please focus on the task at hand. Maintain your vigil over the prisoner.”
Though the words were not directed at him, Nathan could feel the car fill with their power. The voice was unearthly. Demonic. Nathan believed demons were real, with strong persuasion over a person’s heart. They never had any physical presence. Feeling this man’s voice, seeing Josh’s gaze become steady along with his grip on the pistol, Nathan began to reconsider that assumption. Fear, the slow, relentless enemy of men, worked a handhold on him again.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
When Matt Corwin said his goodbyes and left the men’s club on shaky feet, Art Dinneck looked around to see who else he might talk to. He thought again of Beverly. Did she expect him home? No, she knew he was coming here. He’d told her as much. Granted, he didn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but she seemed to be fine with this visit. He’d only been here a little while. It was too early to go home.
As he walked toward the table to watch the remaining four men race for the finish in a boisterous game of cribbage—he never thought of that game as being boisterous until he watched these four play—he checked his watch.
Almost eleven o’clock.
That was late. The lights in the room seemed to dim. For the first time, he saw how faded the furniture was. The walls were a drab color, redeemed only by the colorful oil reproductions hanging unnoticed at various points. Even so, with the exception of one which gave him the heebie-jeebies for some reason, they hung old and uninterestingly around them.
What was he doing here?
He was supposed to be at work. It was work that called him, wasn’t it?
“Oh, God,” he said aloud. Steve Arruda looked up after counting his peg down the home stretch on the cribbage board.
“What’s wrong, Art?” He squinted, as if seeing something for the first time. “Man, you’re looking pale.”
Art looked at him, trying to focus. Why on earth did he come here? Someone from work called. There’d been a problem.
No, Peter Quinn called. Not someone from work.
Art staggered to a chair and sat. He gripped his right arm with his left hand, trying to calm its shaking. Steve scrambled drunkenly up from his chair and ran over.
“You OK, Art?”
Steve’s cribbage partner laid the stub of a cigar he’d been smoking into an ashtray and swiveled in his chair, not rising, but looking over with no less concern. “You should maybe head home, guy. You don’t look so good—hey! Leave those pegs where they are until Steve gets back!”
Next to him, a tall skinny man with a long, dropping moustache laughed and raised his fingers from his peg with dramatic flourish.
I’m going mad, Art thought. He leaned forward, barely hearing Steve’s that’s right, Man, take it easy and breathe. Want me to call your wife? and tried to calm down. His breath came in short gasps. He wondered if this was what it was like to have an anxiety attack. Maybe it was his heart.
The past months swam past unbidden, revealing truth in its unforgiving clarity. Night upon night, coming here, spending less time with Beverly, avoiding church. The call from Nate the other day, when Art told his son to leave him alone. He’d been acting like... like what? A man in a trance. How could he have moved so far...?
The woman, of course. Here, one night; a voice that sounded so much like Peter Quinn’s speaking quietly, like the voice of Satan himself, You cheated on your wife with her, and enjoyed it. Don’t you remember?
Yes, he did remember. He’d had too much to drink... so unlike him, at least the him before all this. A beer now and then, maybe, rarely more than a couple at one time... but yes, he did remember, one night, the woman. The details were sketchy. Memories without substance, like a movie.
Like a movie playing on a television.
What was he remembering?
“Steve,” he said suddenly, the exhaustion and confusion washing away. Even as he looked up to the man crouched in front of him, he imagined lost pieces of his life falling into place.
“Yeah, feeling better?”
“Do you—” what would he say? Did he remember Art having sex with some strange woman?
A movie playing on a television.
He wasn’t drunk that night. He couldn’t have been. He’d remember at least
drinking more than one beer before getting fuzzy. Then what—
The phone rang in his pocket. Steve and the man with the moustache rose simultaneously, each thinking the call was on theirs. Such was the curse of portable phones, Art always thought, generally with more amusement than now.
Art knew it was his phone. Could remember other times, coming clearer, when he had reached this level of understanding only to answer the phone and then... nothing. That moment after Nate’s call at work, any doubt washed away as if some buried instruction in his brain had kicked in, shutting his thoughts down. Again.
Steve’s cribbage partner broke his own rule and counted out his hand on the board. He said happily, “Ain’t mine. Mine plays the Star Spangled Banner when I have a call. Does it better than most versions I’ve heard at the Red Sox games.” He laughed, and slipped his peg a couple of unearned notches ahead.
Art’s phone rang again from his coat hanging over the back of an empty chair. Steve said, “Art, it’s your phone.”
Of course it was, he thought despondently. He rose and grabbed his jacket, but not to answer the call. He headed for the door, needing to get home, talk to Beverly, try and save their marriage before it was too late. He was confused still, but more and more details fell into place in his mind. He hadn’t been unfaithful, he was almost certain of that now. But the thought that he’d been drugged and shown a pornographic film, made to think... no, none of it made any sense.
The phone stopped ringing. Art didn’t have voicemail, so whoever it was must have given up. If it was Beverly, it didn’t matter. He’d be home soon enough. He took the phone from his pocket, turned it off, and put it away again.
Someone else’s phone began to ring. The man with the Star Spangled Banner ring guffawed and said, too loudly, “Looks like the wives are calling you boys home!”
Steve pressed a button on his own phone and said, “Hello?”
Art opened the door and stepped outside. The cool night air opened his mind further. More and more understanding, some of it dark—almost frighteningly so—but clearer than it had been in a long time. It made him giddy with relief.
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