A Covenant of Thieves

by Christian Velguth

  “You don’t know that --”

  “Yes,” Rick said firmly, now meeting and holding his gaze. “I do. But…” He took a deep breath. “I also…I get it. I’m a shit sometimes.”

  Booker arched an eyebrow, thoroughly taken aback by all this.

  “What,” Rick snapped, “you going to give me some pep-talk, tell me not to be too hard on myself?”

  “No.” Booker shook his head. “No, you are a massive asshole. But… I get it. Houston can’t have been easy. Can’t have been like anything I’ve ever experienced.”

  “Damn right,” Rick muttered. He looked away, staring into a dark corner for a moment. Then, sighing, he heaved himself to his feet and, as if it were costing him immensely, reached down a hand. Booker took it and stood, now thoroughly soaked and shivering.

  “You helped Kai,” Rick said. “Bandaged him up. So that’s…thanks.”

  Booker nodded, wiping his hands on his soggy pants. “I wasn’t going to just let him bleed out.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They stood there for a moment, dripping wet, neither of them quite meeting the other’s eyes. Booker suddenly felt ashamed of throwing that punch, losing his temper. (Though not too ashamed.) He had broken the Ark of the Covenant, after all.

  He turned back to the sarcophagus, looking down at the damage he’d done. “Look, maybe we can fix it.”

  “Oh, did you bring some Super Glue?” Rick asked, but his tone was milder, a bit worn out. He reached over and picked up the dislocated cherub. “Maybe it won’t matter. I mean, it’s still the Ark of – oh, hang on.” All at once a quizzical frown creased his brow. He bounced the cherub in his hand, as if judging its weight, then brought it close to his eyes, squinting.

  “Aaand – yeah, it’s fake.”

  Booker blinked. “What?”

  “Yeah.” Rick tossed him the cherub. Booker scrambled to catch it. “See? Clay with gold paint. The real Ark is supposed to have solid gold cherubim on a solid gold lid.” The truth of what he was saying seemed to slam into him all at once. “Oh, fuck!”

  Booker examined the cherub, feeling both let down and let off the hook. “Huh. Maybe it’s a replacement? Maybe the monks broke the real one off or something…”

  Rick crouched beside the Ark and scratched at the gold with a thumbnail. It came off easily, revealing –

  “Plywood.” He leaned against the sarcophagus, resting his head on the stone. “It’s made of plywood. Plywood and gold paint!”

  “But --” Booker shook his head. “I don’t understand. This had to have been made recently. No way the monks didn’t know it was a fake.”

  “I came all this way for a movie prop,” Rick moaned. “Kai fought a dinosaur for something that probably cost fifty bucks to make.”

  Booker crouched on the other side of the sarcophagus, frowning, thinking. This couldn’t be the end of the road. “Rick, listen. What if this is like a decoy? What if they do have the real Ark, but they moved it somewhere else? You said there’s, what, twenty island monasteries? It could still be on one of them.”

  “Needle in a haystack,” Rick moaned, face now buried in his arms. This last discovery seemed to have broken him. “God, I’m tired. Maybe I should just call this one, go home.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “Why not?” Rick looked up at him. “Honestly, if the Ark is out there, then these guys have done a damn good job of hiding it. Clearly we’re not needed here.”

  “Someone out there is willing to kill to get the real Ark, remember? They have killed. That’s what we’re trying to stop. The Ark is just a means to that end.”

  Rick got to his feet, leaning against the sarcophagus. “Fine. Here you go. We’ll just put this little guy back --” He balanced the broken cherub on the lid. “And we’ll snap a few pictures. If this is the same ‘Ark’ that convinced Martin Kingston and Berhanu Abraham and Ibis the first time around, it should do the trick now. We can just use it to lure out the assholes who killed Estelle’s dad and then, I don’t know, turn it into a footstool.”

  Booker shook his head. “No. We do this right. It’s your people getting slaughtered out there. I would’ve thought you’d want to see this through, after what you just told me. You’re really going to give up now, with how much it all means to you?”

  Rick threw up his hands. “The trail’s dead, Hopkins! The real Ark could be anywhere at this point, if it even still exists.”

  Booker nodded at the fake. “Open it.”

  “I promise you the real Ark isn’t hiding inside.”

  “Just open it, will you? Maybe there’s a clue or a message or something.”

  Rick laughed. “What, you think the monks want to rub it in our face?” When Booker didn’t relent, Rick shrugged. He reached into the stone sarcophagus, grasped the lid with one hand, and flipped it easily into the air, letting it splash into the water where it bobbed and floated like a boogie board.

  Rick stared at it, looking utterly dejected. “See, if this had been the real thing, it wouldn’t be doing that. Solid gold.” He glanced down into the Ark, then frowned. “Huh.”

  * * *

  “What is it?” Hopkins leaned over to peer inside.

  “A rock,” Rick said flatly. The fake Ark appeared to be full of sand, but nestled in it was -- a rock. He reached in with both hands and lifted out the stone. It was heavier than he had expected, almost football-sized and similar in shape, dark, with an odd undulating surface. Turning it in the light, there seemed to be facets of metal or some other shiny substance in addition to rock. It struck a chord in his memory. “It’s a betyl.”

  “A what?”

  “A meteorite. See?” He handed it to Hopkins. “Iron, I think, by the weight. Lots of ancient cultures worshipped them as divine, living object. Gods fallen from the sky.”

  Hopkins looked up at him sharply. “You think this is – what, the Jewish god?”

  “No.” Rick frowned. “Although, some historians do think the stone slabs of the Ten Commandments were actually meteorites. An impact would explain the fire and lightning the Hebrews saw at Mount Sinai when Moses went to speak with God.”

  “So this is the Ten Commandments.”

  Rick rolled his eyes. “No. Look, half the churches in Ethiopia have what they call tabot. They’re stones that represent the Ark, or the laws of Moses, or just God in general. It’s not unlikely that at least a few of those could be betyls as well. That’s probably all this is.”

  Hopkins was holding the stone up to his face. “There’s a seam here.”

  “What? It’s a meteorite.”

  “I think maybe it opens.” He gripped the stone with both hands like a clamshell and twisted. There was a moment of nothing – and then a sharp crack. The betyl split cleanly in two. “Looks like it was sealed with some kind of resin.”

  “Would you stop breaking things?” But Rick hurried over to his side, taking one half of the betyl. There was a thin crust of a whitish substance around the edges. He rubbed some between his fingers and sniffed it. “Huh. It’s myrrh. Yes, like the Three Wise Men, before you ask. But…” Rick ran a hand over the inside face of the cleaved stone. “This has to have been done recently. Look, it’s almost mirror-smooth. No way the Hebrews sliced through it without modern tools.”

  “Rick,” Hopkins said. “Look at this.”

  Hopkins was holding his half of the betyl, almost cradling it. Unlike Rick’s half, the inside wasn’t smooth. It was set with a deep, rectangular indentation. Fitted perfectly into it was a metal cylinder. Rick was suddenly and forcefully reminded of Estelle’s blue pebble and the message that had been hidden inside it.

  Without a word, he took the betyl half from Hopkins, trading it for his own. He brushed his fingertips over the cylinder. It was stamped with miniscule bumps and indents. Though they were warped by the curve of the cylinder and covered in oxidation, Rick could still identify a few of them.

  “Writing,” he breathed. “It’s a seal. They were used
to stamp clay tablets with signatures and proclamations. You roll them over the wet clay and --”

  “I know what a cylinder seal is,” Hopkins said. “But they’re usually made of clay, aren’t they? Why’s this one metal?”

  Rick shook his head. “No idea. But I’m pretty sure it’s genuine. Old, I mean.” The oxidation had clearly built up over centuries. He glanced at the fake Ark. “It doesn’t make sense for this to have been in there. Unless…”

  “Unless?” Hopkins prompted.

  Rick began to pace around the stone sarcophagus, following the thread playing out in his brain. “Maybe they never had the real Ark in Ethiopia. Maybe whatever ended up here was always a decoy, created by those priests who escaped Manasseh’s slaughter in case he ever came looking for it. But not just a decoy -- a map” He lifted the betyl and its cylinder seal. “It could be a message. A clue, like you said, pointing to the true Ark’s final resting place. That would explain why nobody has ever been allowed to see the Ark. Because the Kohen knew it was a fake. They had to know, they built a plywood replacement at least once. But this – this is the real prize. The real secret.”

  “So the monks had the location of the real Ark this whole time,” Hopkins said, “but they never went to get it?”

  Rick shrugged. “Maybe they never opened the betyl. Or there’s a message on this seal telling them to just let it be. Or maybe they tried, but couldn’t find it.”

  “So what you’re saying is, we haven’t reached the end of the road just yet.”

  “Possibly. Only one way to find out.” Rick hefted the betyl with its inset cylinder seal, grinning --

  The cylinder slipped out of its depression and fell, clattering, into the space between the fake Ark and the stone sarcophagus. Rick stared at where it had disappeared for a moment, heart in his throat, then glanced up at Hopkins. “Don’t say a word.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” But he was clearly holding back a grin.

  Rick dropped the betyl in the water and reached into the sarcophagus. His arm was too wide to fit between fake Ark and stone. “Damn it. We have to lift this thing out, c’mon.”

  Hopkins positioned himself, and together they gripped the sides of the fake Ark. It was plywood, but that sand made it heavy. Getting it up was almost as difficult as lifting the sarcophagus had been, exacerbated by the fact that it was surrounded on all sides by walls of stone. They had to lift it nearly above their heads before they could move it from the sarcophagus.

  With zero ceremony they tossed it to the side, letting it splash into the dark pool. Panting, Rick peered down into the sarcophagus. The cylinder sat in a corner -- thankfully, it looked undamaged.

  “You’re lucky,” Hopkins said.

  Rick shushed him, reaching down. He’d gotten the cylinder seal in his grasp when he heard a solid clunk, and the sarcophagus shivered.

  He quickly stood up, clutching the seal. “What was that?”

  Hopkins opened his mouth -- and then there was another clunk. Both of them looked down as the sarcophagus began to sink into the floor, the water churning and bubbling around it.

  “Huh,” Hopkins said. “Moving the fake Ark must’ve triggered a mechanism.”

  Water was pouring into the sarcophagus now. In a few more moments it had been engulfed, vanishing into the floor of the pool. They stepped back as the water bubbled and concentric rings emanated out.

  “I wonder why --”

  Rick raised a hand, silencing Hopkins. “Listen. Can you hear…”

  Something was echoing in the cavern. A hissing, rushing sound. It seemed to be coming from above them. Both men met each other’s eyes, then slowly raised their gaze. Rick could just make out the face of the nearest cherub, towering above him, wings outstretched. The sound was coming from…

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  Twin gouts of water exploded from the hollowed-out eyes with enough force that they shot almost horizontally across the breadth of the cavern, meeting the jets that were issuing from the eyes of the other cherub. For a moment the air twenty feet above them was full of dark, sparkling water, and Rick had just enough time to scramble for his waterproof satchel -- and then the force behind the jets died slightly, and they curved, bending down gracefully, and gallons of roaring water fell on their heads.

  It felt like being hit with a stack of bricks. Both Rick and Hopkins were knocked off their feet. Rick threw out his hands, catching himself before he could be shoved underwater and held there by the force of the torrent falling on him. He crawled forward on hands and knees, struggling to break free of the heavy streams. After a few meters he was able to stand, albeit shakily, and look around, blinking away stars. Both cherubim were weeping endlessly into the cavern, filling it with a rumbling roar as loud as a jet engine -- as well as more water.

  He located Hopkins, splashing to one side, still pinned by the deluge. Rick slogged his way over, keenly aware of how much more difficult it was to move. The water had already risen past his knees. He grabbed one flailing hand and pulled Hopkins, spluttering and gasping, up onto his feet.

  “Is this a fucking booby trap?!” Hopkins shouted, once he’d gotten his breath.

  “Looks that way!” Rick turned on the spot, buffeted from all sides by a swirling current that threatened to pull him off his feet again. The fake Ark was now nowhere to be seen, and the stalagmites were quickly disappearing. He could feel the water rising above his thighs, creeping past his waist. They had to get out of here, quick. But -- “Where’s the rope?!”

  It should have been hanging in the middle of the chamber, but it wasn’t there.

  Hopkins turned, looking around wildly -- then pointed. “There!”

  Rick followed his finger. The rope was hanging in the middle of the chamber, but it was also caught by the powerful jets of water, making it twist wildly and fly about. “We have to go, now!” Rick shouted. “Before it gets pulled from its anchor!”

  Together they struggled towards the center, reaching for the rope. It flailed about them like a living thing, almost as if it were trying to avoid their grasp. Rick got a hold of it and then it was yanked free, nearly slicing his palms open. Hopkins grabbed it next and put his weight into it, leaning back to hold it taught. Wordlessly Rick hooked their belts to the line, Hopkins first. The water was above their waists now. He motioned for him to go -- talking was all but useless in the noise.

  Hopkins glanced up. They would have to pass through the jets of water. It wasn’t appealing, but there was no choice -- they’d just have to hope their weight would be enough to keep them from being slammed against the wall.

  Rick took the rope from Hopkins and held it still as he switched on his belt and began to ascend. Rick watched him rise towards the roiling mass where the jets met, waited until Hopkins had climbed a good ten feet, then switched on his own belt.

  For a moment it didn’t seem to want to work, perhaps damaged or hindered by the water -- and then Rick shot up, pulled from the pool and ascending as quickly as the belt would allow. The water falling on his head became a driving rain, then a painful barrage of needles as he drew closer. He glanced up only once, eyes squinted to see Hopkin’s boots disappear into the jets -- and then he was engulfed.

  Rick had been caught in a flood only once while growing up in Houston. It was when both he and Kai were young, still learning the ropes of survival. They’d been stupid enough to be caught in a drainage tunnel when the storm came. After what felt like an eternity of darkness and bouncing endlessly off walls, the only thing that had saved them from drowning was being cannonballed from the mouth of the tunnel, out into open air, and falling more than twelve feet to the concrete canal that the tunnel opened onto.

  If this wasn’t worse, it was damn close. The water exploded against him from all sides, feeling like a pair of immense hands squeezing him, trying to crush him, forcing the air from his lungs, filling his ears, his nose, pressing against his eyelids. Rick couldn’t breathe, didn’t dare to try -- he could fee
l himself spinning on the rope, which only added to his sense of disorientation and made it impossible to tell if he was still climbing. All he could do was wait, eyes squeezed shut, lungs burning for air, and hope…

  Just when he became certain that he had stopped his ascent, was going to be flayed to shreds, Rick burst free. The ravenous press of the water fell away, its voice growing moderately quieter and leaving his ears ringing. His skin burned as if he’d spent a day naked in the Sahara and his head was spinning. By the time he opened his eyes and managed to get his bearings, Rick realized he was nearly up to the mouth of the shaft.

  “Got you!” Hopkins gasped, reaching down to pull him up. Rick kicked against the side of the shaft for purchase, his legs like jelly. Somehow together they managed to get him up out of the hole. As soon as he was free they both collapsed, falling away from the pit and onto the hard flagstones.

  Rick lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling of the chapel, listening to the muffled roar below and feeling the floor rumble. He could feel water trickling from his ears and nose and eyes and every other pore. His clothes were a sodden mess.

  “Please tell me,” Hopkins gasped, “that you still have that cylinder seal.”

  Slowly Rick turned to look at him. The ex-FBI agent looked about as good as he felt. His shirt had been blasted to shreds by the high-powered jets. He was watching Rick with red eyes, panting and gasping.

  Rick reached down and undid the clasp on his satchel. He felt inside, fingers fumbling -- and then he pulled out the cylinder seal.

  “Oh thank God,” Booker wheezed, and collapsed back onto the floor.

  Twenty-Eight

  University of Gondar Hospital

  Gondar, Ethiopia

  Estelle knew that, after what she had been through, she should have enjoyed her downtime in Gondar. It was a pleasant city and the weather was amiable. It would have been a nice place to relax, recuperate, take stock of her life. Instead, while Rick and Booker were down at Lake Tana looking for the Ark, she was cooped up in either the hotel or the hospital, feeling restless and useless in equal measures.