The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  On the far side of the stage, Saxby approached the Menorah and dipped the asperges brush into the silver bowl, covering it in the goat’s blood.

  Just as Malchus had done with the hyssop, he used the brush to flick splashes of it onto the Menorah. The globules of red sat immobile on the metal for an instant, before running down the glowing gold in thick viscous streams.

  Ava assumed most of the neo-Nazis in the room would imagine it was just a piece of grotesque black magic theatre. But she knew all too well that the Bible was clear about the sacred properties of the blood of sacrificed animals. The Bible gave explicit and repeated instructions about daubing the altars of King Solomon’s Temple in blood. It was also precise about anointing priests with it, as Moses had anointed Aaron and his children with the blood of a sacrificed ram, and likewise had sprinkled the blood from young bulls onto the people at the foot of Mount Sinai to confirm their dedication to God.

  As she watched Saxby, she could hear the gunfire outside getting louder and closer. She could almost feel the air shaking with the discharges.

  Malchus was still reading the conjuration as Saxby turned to the Lance of Longinus, and began blessing it with the blood.

  Next to her, Malchus was now reading from the second sheet of his translation.

  “With the permission of my king, I conjure Yadiel, Ra’asiel, Haniel, Asrael, Yisriel, A’shael, Amuhael, that you attach yourselves to me and surrender the Sword to me, so that I may use it according to my desire.”

  Glancing further down the page, she could see that the conjuration culminated with the core of the spell—the list of Yahweh’s mystical names to summon and bind him.

  As her eyes flicked to the very bottom, she could see that where the list of mystical names should have been, the translator had written:

  The original London manuscript only has an ‘X’ in place of each mystical name. It seems the medieval scribe of this redaction did not wish to make the spell widely available.

  Saxby was now moving behind her, to the Ark. She twisted round as far as she could, in time to see him flick a brush of blood at it.

  Once again, Ava could not help reflecting that, in their own warped and twisted way, Saxby and Malchus had done their homework. The biblical ritual in the book of Leviticus was clear that every year, on the Day of Atonement, the Hebrew high priest was to enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the Ark with the sacrificial blood of a goat and a bullock.

  When Saxby had finished daubing the outside of the Ark with the blood, he indicated to the men around it to remove the lid.

  He clearly meant to sprinkle blood inside it, too.

  Beside her, Malchus was still reading from the spell.

  “Fulfil for me everything that I have been conjuring you for. Deliver unto me with this Sword the secrets from above and below, the mysteries from above and below, and my wish be fulfilled and my word hearkened unto.”

  Without warning, she felt as if all the air in the room was suddenly on fire. It was so hot she could feel it burning inside her nose and mouth.

  At the same time, there was a searing light and a deafening thunderclap that seemed to blow out her eardrums.

  Before she had registered what was happening, shards of razor-sharp twisted metal hurtled past her head, and it felt as if someone had punched her viciously in the shoulder.

  Disorientated and with her ears ringing, she stared around numbly.

  The chamber was filling with black smoke, and beside her she could see Malchus lying on the floor. His hood had come off, and his face was bloodied. But he was conscious, gazing about in confusion.

  Dazed, she saw a shard of gold sticking out of her shoulder. The chainmail had protected her from a more serious injury, but a long spike of gleaming metal had nevertheless punctured her skin and embedded itself deep into her muscle.

  As she twisted round further to look behind her, she could no longer see any sign of the gold-covered Ark, lid, or carrying poles.

  Instead, there was now a charred burning heap of smouldering wood fragments strewn across the floor, along with splinters and shards of tangled metal.

  Her mind refused to accept what she was seeing.

  This could not be happening.

  Her eyes scoured the room for the Ark.

  It had gone.

  She stared in disbelief, first at the smoking remains, then at the scene of destruction in the vault around her.

  The men who had been crowding around, helping Saxby lift the Ark’s lid, were lying on the floor—a pile of bodies, many with whole limbs missing. Judging by the way they had fallen, it was clear they had taken the full force of the blast, shielding Ava from the brunt of it.

  None were moving.

  Saxby lay next to them. From the missing section of skull through which she could see a mess of mangled brain matter, it was immediately obvious he was also very dead.

  Her head was spinning, and she still could not hear anything through the ringing in her ears. But she was thinking clearly enough to know something explosive had just detonated very close to the Ark.

  As she replayed the scene in her mind, she realized that the explosion had been triggered the moment they had lifted its lid.

  Was that even possible?

  Suddenly, the realization hit her.

  It was something that had bothered her in the days after she had left Dubai. And now it made sense.

  Arkady Sergeyevitch Yevchenko.

  As he had lain strapped to the table in his suite’s kitchen at the Burj al-Arab hotel, his last word had baffled her.

  “Insurance,” he had whispered.

  It had seemed a strange thing to say as a dying word, and she had been struggling to make sense of it ever since.

  Had this been his insurance?

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  He booby-trapped the Ark?

  It was unthinkable.

  The Ark had survived for over three thousand years. And now it was gone, right under her nose—the handiwork of a paranoid Russian lawyer.

  Distraught, she closed her eyes, fighting the urge to start screaming at someone.

  Anyone.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes again and looked down at Malchus, who was picking himself up off the floor.

  But he never made it.

  Two searing white lights ripped either side of the darkened room apart, followed a millisecond later by a pair of deafening deep percussive booms.

  The effect on Ava’s body was dramatic and instantaneous.

  Her vision was bleached out as the intense flashes tore through her eyes, leaving her unable to see anything beyond a burning bright-white magnesium light stamped onto the back of her retinas.

  Her ears, already deadened from whatever had detonated in the Ark, shut down completely so she could hear nothing except a high-pitched whistling. And as the fluid in her inner ear was bludgeoned by the heavy pressure waves, she lost her sense of balance, and the room turned upside down.

  At first she thought she may have been shot in the head or had a stroke. But as her vision slowly returned, she was aware of armed men swarming the stage around her, and others fast-roping down at breakneck speed from the shattered high windows above.

  Their balaclavas and unmarked all-black tactical ops kit gave away nothing about their identity.

  They quickly formed a ring around the stage, their weapons levelled at the neo-Nazi paramilitaries standing and lying on the floor, equally as stunned as she was.

  The intruders were shouting something, but Ava could hear only an eerie silence overlaid by the whistling in her ears.

  Over by the main door, another armed group burst in. They came in hard, weapons raised at shoulder-height, with mounted flashlights sweeping the room, cutting the gloom into tunnels of fast-moving bright white light.

  They were fully armoured in helmets and hard-plated ballistic counter-terrorism jackets. Their sleeves bore small rectangular German flags above eagles and the word ‘POLIZE
I’. Several of them also wore badges displaying parachute wings in oak leaves.

  Still unable to hear, she was suddenly aware of one of the balaclavad men on the stage making straight for her, pulling a short-bladed dagger from his ops waistcoat. The glow from the braziers reflected on the brushed steel blade as he appeared to shout something at her.

  With no hearing, she was wholly at his mercy—with no way of telling if he was friend or foe.

  He arrived in front of her, still shouting something, but his lips were covered by his balaclava so she could not even lip-read what he was saying.

  Beyond him, over on the other side of the stage, she saw two more figures rapidly fast-roping in. They were not wearing the same all-black kit as the others, and with a flash of amazement followed by overwhelming relief she recognized them immediately—Ferguson and the guard, Danny.

  Ferguson was wearing different clothes to the ones she had last seen him in, but his expression was infinitely happier. Both were armed, and took up positions on the stage alongside the others.

  She looked at the man with the knife, peering at his eyes through the holes in the balaclava. Finally, she recognized the deep shadows and crinkled lines of the Frenchman’s lived-in face.

  “Max?” she shouted, as the intense relief washed over her.

  The man nodded, raising the knife to cut her hands free.

  Breathing more easily now, she looked around intently, and saw that Max and his men were carrying FAMAS assault rifles. Reproaching herself for her lack of observation, that was the only clue she should have needed.

  Frenchmen were patriotic to the end,

  Quickly slicing through the ropes, Max helped her off the stake. She put her arms on him to steady herself, and with no warning he took hold of the shard of gold protruding from her shoulder and expertly pulled it out cleanly.

  She was overwhelmed by a sudden stabbing agony from the metal slicing across the raw nerve endings in the wound. But the sensation quickly subsided into a more manageable aching pain as her body released a slew of natural opioids.

  She stamped her feet and shook her arms to get the blood circulating again, before noticing that Max was saying something to her.

  She pointed to her ears and shrugged to indicate she was deaf.

  He lifted his balaclava so she could read his lips. “There’s someone outside who wants to see you.”

  She nodded, moving closer to the edge of the stage, away from the stake. As she did, she spotted a hollow metal canister on the floor, the shape of an elongated drinks can with a dozen circular perforations drilled into the casing.

  She was reassured to see she had not had a stroke.

  Stun grenades.

  Still reeling, she could see the German police shouting and gesticulating for the neo-Nazi paramilitaries to put their firearms down and lie on the ground.

  None of them complied. They kept their weapons pointed at the killing funnel the policemen had just walked into, and at Max’s men on the stage.

  Their leader—the large tattooed guard—was a few yards away from her, still aiming his submachine gun at the policemen. It looked like a toy in his massive arms, but the expression on his face was anything but playful.

  Slowly, in the gloom, he began to turn.

  She could see one of the German policemen yelling at him, but she still could not hear anything. Before she knew it, the large man’s gun was pointing directly at her chest.

  His lips were moving.

  As the whistling in her ears began to subside, she started to hear what he was saying. It sounded heavily muffled, as if her head was under a blanket, but at least she could dimly make out the words.

  “Let us out, or she dies, and so do a lot of you.” He spoke clearly and deliberately, slowly covering the last few yards to where she was, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on his granite face. “I’ll slot her right here. You’ve got ten seconds to decide.”

  All eyes were suddenly on him.

  There was silence as everyone calculated the likely consequences if shooting started, although it was obvious that the wrong decision would turn the room into a bloodbath very quickly.

  The tattooed guard was staring at Ava over the barrel of his gun. His nostrils were flared, and he was breathing hard.

  She had seen the look often enough to know he was a man preparing to kill.

  Instead of fear or panic, Ava felt a surge of elation.

  The police may or may not make the right call. But she had absolutely had enough for one night of people making decisions that resulted in her getting seriously hurt.

  Having been tied up under the threat of death for so long, her pent-up anger and fear exploded inside her in a rush of adrenaline.

  Now she was free of the ropes, she no longer had to be a spectator.

  Not any more.

  Her destiny was in her own hands again.

  In a lightning-fast movement, she lunged towards the big guard, drawing the lethal bronze sickle-sword from the sash around her hips, and swinging it up with both hands to a fighting guard.

  It was an amazingly well-balanced weapon, and it felt good to no longer be the only unarmed person in the room.

  She planted her feet two yards in front of the large man. “Let’s do this,” she hissed at him, feeling her muscles flood with blood.

  She was angry, and had every intention of letting it show. “You don’t need the gun,” she taunted. “Or do you?” Her eyes flashed darkly.

  She had been watching him since Boleskine House, and was keenly aware that he was very dangerous. He was alert and moved well, and could not have reached his position in the organization without being able to handle himself against people who knew how to fight much dirtier than she did.

  But one advantage she did have was the element of surprise.

  There was no way he would have anticipated this development.

  It was a gamble. She was betting he needed her alive to use as a bargaining chip. But if she was wrong, she was happy to take her chances. At least it was a fairer fight then being tied to a chair or a stake and strangled or bled out.

  “What’s the matter?” Ava injected a note of mockery into her voice. “Never touched a woman before?”

  She could feel the tension in the room like a charge of electricity, but was beyond fear. After all she had been through, it was exhilarating to be in charge of her own fate again.

  There was a look of incredulity in his eyes, but it rapidly turned into a snarl of rage. He took a step forward, and she could see his finger starting to squeeze the trigger.

  But he never got to finish the movement, as with a deafening bang, the back of his head vapourized into a fine red mist, and he dropped heavily to the floor.

  Off to the side, through the dim light, she could see Ferguson’s arm outstretched, and a small cloud of smoke dissipating into the air above the pistol in his hand.

  Ava was breathing hard, trying to calm herself down.

  “Put your weapons on the floor!” the brawny leader of the German police screamed at the neo-Nazi paramilitaries again. “Now!”

  With Saxby dead on the stage and the Skipper down, one by one they complied.

  “On the floor!” the policeman shouted. “Face down. All of you. Hands behind you heads.”

  As the men began sliding to the floor, the police moved swiftly among them, rolling them onto their fronts and securing their hands with zip ties.

  Ava felt someone touch her arm. She swung round, the sword still raised.

  It was Ferguson.

  “Well, you look beautiful,” he nodded appreciatively. “There was no need to dress specially for me.”

  Ava had been in the costume so long she had forgotten she was wearing it. She blushed under the heavy white make-up. “You like it?” She lowered the sword, recovering quickly. “Maybe I’ll keep it then.”

  “You should seriously think about it,” he nodded approvingly. “And the perfume, too. Very nice.”

  She smil
ed back at him—it was the first time she had anything to smile about all day. It was truly good to see him. “So you and Danny couldn’t stay away?” she asked.

  “His name’s Uri. He’s Israeli. I’d say Mossad, but he’s keeping quiet about that.”

  “I thought as much,” Ava nodded. This was an added obstacle. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Same as us,” Ferguson answered, tucking his gun back into his waistband. “He fished me out of the well to help him. But when our German friends turned up, we decided to give them a hand. Then when Max arrived, it seemed rude not to accept his invitation to join in his rope games.”

  He looked at the wound in her shoulder. There was blood seeping onto her clothing. “You want to get that seen to.”

  Ava nodded. She would do it later. “So who called the German police?”

  “Police?” He shook his head. “Don’t let them hear you say that. They’re GSG-9, the German version of the SAS. They can’t be army by law, so they all leave and get a police uniform instead.” He smiled. “Apparently once our MI6 tail had picked up our location at Boleskine House, the ever-diligent team at Legoland tracked the chopper to here. They couldn’t get over the Channel in time to follow us, so they called in GSG-9 to pick us up. But as it happens, our German colleagues turn out to be much more interested in Malchus and his friends than whatever we may have done.” He indicated the neo-Nazis being frog-marched out of the door. “They’ve done a good job. They got all the guys outside rounded up, too.”

  At the mention of Malchus’s name, Ava suddenly realized she had not seen him for a while. The last time she had spotted him, Uri had been near him.

  “Damn it!” she yelled, jumping off the stage, and running for the door. Passing Max, she shoved the bronze sword into his hand, and pulled a handgun off his belt kit. “I’ll bring it back,” she shouted, tearing past him and out of the cellar.

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  110

  The SS Generals’ Hall

  Wewelsburg Castle