Ark of Fire (49 page)

Raising the paper cup to his lips, Caedmon took a sip of the horrible-tasting brew that he’d purchased at the fish-and-chip shop across the way. According to the reticent fellow behind the counter, the afternoon coach to London was due to arrive in forty minutes.

“It’s never easy to witness the extinction of a life,” he replied, also haunted by the deaths of Harliss and Sanchez. “Try as one might to erase the memory, it leaves an imprint on your soul.”

“Not for MacFarlane or his men.” Raising the plastic lid, Edie took several swallows. Only to grimace a few seconds later from the bitter aftertaste. “They wholeheartedly believe that when they pull the trigger, they’re doing God’s work.”

“Somehow I doubt that MacFarlane’s God would have much truck with those of us who long for peace, not war.”

Sighing, Edie wrapped her free arm around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in desperate need of a group hug.”

The web of life was fragile, indeed, and he hoped this day’s atrocities would quickly recede from Edie’s memory. Hoped she could forget what she’d witnessed. And forgive what she’d seen him do. As soon as they reached London, he intended to call in a favor from an old chum at MI5 and have her placed in an out-of-the way safe house. Some place where Stanford MacFarlane and his assassins could never find her.

Edie inclined her head away from his shoulder. “What do you think MacFarlane plans to do now that he has the Ark?”

“The first order of business will be to get the relic out of Britain. If he’s discovered with the Ark on English soil, not only will the bloody thing will be confiscated, it will be sent directly to the British Museum.” Where it would draw larger crowds than the Rosetta stone, the Elgin Marbles, and the Sutton Hoo treasure combined.

He removed the nicked GPS receiver from his anorak pocket. “It’ll take a few moments to initialize,” he informed her as he hit the
Power
button. He held the receiver aloft to get a satellite fix on their position. A few seconds later, glancing at the small display screen, he said with a teasing smile, “Ah, we are exactly where we should be.”

Edie halfheartedly returned the smile. “Since I have yet to correctly program the TV remote, I’ll have to trust you on that one. But isn’t the GPS receiver a bit superfluous? I mean, we’re here already and we know where ‘here’ is located.”

“On the contrary. Given that this is a handheld computer with satellite capabilities, untold information could be stored on the device.” Using the
NAV
key, he accessed a database file of saved maps. “Now, isn’t this interesting. A number of maps were recently downloaded. According to the list, there are maps for Oxford, Oxfordshire, Godmersham, Swanley, and—” He stared at the list, stunned.

“Come on, Caedmon. I can only hold my bated breath for so long.”

“And Malta,” he replied, turning the receiver in her direction.

“Malta?” Tapping her pursed lips, she stared at the display screen. “Although world geography isn’t one of my strong suits, I seem to recall that Malta is a spit of an island located in the Mediterranean Sea. Do you think that’s where MacFarlane is headed?”

“Given that the list of maps perfectly corresponds to MacFarlane’s known movements in the last seventy-two hours, we must assume that Malta is his intended destination.” And how very ironic, given that the diminutive isle had once been home to the Knights of St. John, the same order of warrior monks to which Galen of Godmersham had been an initiated member.

“Isn’t Malta where St. Paul was shipwrecked while en route to Rome?”

“Hmm? Er, yes,” he answered, interrupted from his reveries. “As a crossroads between Africa and Europe, the island has hosted many a famed and infamous personage during its turbulent history.”

“But why would MacFarlane take the Ark to Malta?”

Caedmon shrugged, admittedly at a loss. “The dreams of a madman are difficult to decipher.”

“I’m guessing that getting the Ark out of England is going to be an even more difficult feat, what with airport security having tightened considerably in recent years.”

“Which is why Stanford MacFarlane will no doubt transport the Ark via a shipping vessel. An innocuous boat leaving port in the dead of night sounds about right.” As he spoke, the mobile phone in his pocket began to shrilly beep.

“What’s that?”

Caedmon shoved his hand into his anorak pocket and removed the mobile he’d taken from Sanchez. He glanced at the digital display.

“Unless I’m greatly mistaken, we’ve just been given Stanford MacFarlane’s next chess move,” he said, showing her the flash message.

“Well, will ya look at that? It’s some sort of a text message sent by an unnamed person at Rosemont Security Consultants. Although I don’t know that I would call it a text message per se, since it appears to be nothing more than a numeric list.”

“A
coded
numeric list, I daresay.” Caedmon suspected that Stanford MacFarlane maintained contact with his troops with flash messages sent via mobile phones. A brilliant means of communication in the satellite age, enabling MacFarlane to simultaneously issue battle orders to followers across the globe.

“If only we had the encryption code,” he murmured.

“Do you think the encryption has anything to do with the map of Malta that we found on the GPS receiver?”

“Mmmm . . . difficult to say.” His gaze ricocheted between the receiver and the mobile. “Probably not, given that Harliss was the only one of MacFarlane’s men to carry a satellite receiver. I suspect that MacFarlane moves his chess pieces very carefully across the board, revealing the master plan in dribs and drabs.”

“Where do we begin the hunt?”

“In Malta. However, from this point forward, there is no more ‘we.’”

When Edie heard that, her brown eyes furiously gleamed. “So, in other words, you’re planning to dump me and chase after MacFarlane on your own.”

“Rather than ‘chase after MacFarlane,’ I intend to retrieve the Ark.” Getting up from the bench, he walked over to the nearby trash receptacle and tossed his coffee cup into the plastic-lined can.

He had no delusions as to the difficulty of the task he’d set for himself. Tracking down MacFarlane and actually confiscating the Ark of the Covenant would more than likely prove an impossible, if not deadly, undertaking. But try he must. The GPS receiver had proved a godsend. Now, at least, he knew where to hunt for his nemesis.

Grabbing him by the wrist, Edie urged him to retake his seat on the bench. “I know you’re worried about me. That said, going after the Ark isn’t a one-man job. You’re going to need all the help you can get to vanquish MacFarlane and his Warriors of—”

“I can’t take you with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have time to potty-train you.”

“Why, you arrogant bastard!” She leaped to her feet. “I’m not some Bond girl along for the ride. I’m your partner. And in case you didn’t get the memo, I am a full and equal partner.”

Caedmon stared at her, unable to take his eyes off the long corkscrew curls that blew about her flushed face. Also unable to quash the memory of her standing beneath an upraised pickax.

“‘In the world you
will
have tribulation,’” she continued. “John sixteen. A Bible verse that Stanford MacFarlane, no doubt, holds near and dear.”

“And a frightening prospect it is.”

“Yes, it is frightening. Which is why I’m going with you to Malta. Unlike you, I completely understand MacFarlane and his radical beliefs. For five years, I was fed a steady diet of Ezekiel and the End Times prophecy.”

“After today’s primer in apocalyptic belief, I should be able to manage.”

“What you heard was just the tip of the iceberg. Think of me as your very own expert in Christian fundamentalism. Besides, we’re a team. We have been from the very beginning. So, short of knocking me unconscious, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Very well,” he murmured.

If she wondered at his ready acquiescence, she gave no indication. “Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, what’s the game plan?”

“Simply put, to grab MacFarlane by the Old Testament and squeeze very, very hard.”

Caedmon took a deep breath of the invigorating sea air. Bracing his hands on the deck railing, he stared at the rolling blue Mediterranean waves that danced in the lemony light of early morn. It was the same sea that Odysseus once sailed en route to battle the Trojans.

Standing beside him, her cheeks tinted red from the breeze, Edie also deeply inhaled. “Other than a Potomac River dinner cruise, this is the first time I’ve ever been on a big boat. I think I like being on the open sea.” A mischievous smile playing about her lips, she winked at him. “Could be because I was a lady pirate in a past life; what do you think?”

“I think I’d rather be in an airplane roaring high above the sea,” he grumbled. “Too many of these blasted ferry boats have sunk in recent years. Not to mention that traveling by ferry is a damn slow way to get from point A to point B.” Point A being Naples and point B their final destination: Malta.

“Yeah, but given that it’s the dead of winter, flights into Malta are few and far between. This will actually get us to our destination six hours sooner than if we’d waited for the next available flight. Which you would know if you’d ever watched
The Amazing Race
. So stop griping.”

“I have been doing quite a bit of that, haven’t I?”

“Understandable. You’re under a lot of stress.”

Truly an understatement. Already, the old paranoia had set in. The niggling fear that an unseen enemy would lurch from the shadows. Danger and treachery but a heartbeat away. If allowed to run rampant, fear could quickly become a man’s worst enemy. More dangerous than the brute with a gun.

Because of his intelligence training, he knew the drill—always use cash, refrain from using one’s real name, and never, ever sleep in the same bed two nights in a row. Simple enough if not for having Edie in tow. With her Pre-Raphaelite beauty, she garnered attention wherever she went.

An ultimatum. One he didn’t much care to ponder.

“You’ve got two very big creases in the middle of your brow. Care to share your worries?”

“I was thinking about the Ark and the poor blokes at Bethshemesh,” he lied, not about to confess his true thoughts.

“And you’re concerned that when we commandeer the Ark from MacFarlane, it may gobble us whole.”

“Mock me if you will, but the Ark
was
once used as a supercharged weapon of mass destruction,” he informed her, still hoping she would have a change of heart and return to the mainland.

“Eons ago. Which means there’s nobody around who knows how to activate the ancient electromagnetic technology that once powered the Ark. To operate a piece of machinery, you need an instruction manual. And that manual, whether it was written down or passed verbally from father to son, has long since vanished. In other words, the Ark has lost its
oom-pa-pa
. So no need to worry about it exploding in our faces or anything like that.”

“That’s not the danger I fear. As a tool of propaganda, the Ark could be used to convince millions of God-fearing people that the so-called End Times are truly upon us.”

Her eyes focused on the sprightly waves in the distance, Edie plaintively sighed. “Yeah, that has me worried, as well,” she conceded. “Though God may not be fooled by MacFarlane’s false piety, a whole lot of good, well-intentioned people will eat up his prophetic ramblings. But enough said on that topic, huh?”

Pronouncement made, Edie turned away from the water. Leaning against the railing, her arms folded across her chest, she stared at him. Quite unabashedly. Although they shared the vessel with countless passengers, there was something inherently intimate about the wind, the water, the warmth that radiated between their two bodies, all of it countermanding the cool satin chill of the winter’s day.

Caedmon sidled closer.

After Jules died, he’d had a few casual relationships, unwilling to take another chance. Which is why it made no sense, with the Ark hanging over his head like the blasted sword of Damocles, that he would now want the very thing he’d studiously avoided.

Bloody hell.
He was daft to think they could make a go of it. They didn’t even live on the same continent.

In truth, he didn’t know how he felt about Edie Miller. He’d not had time to analyze his feelings. He only knew it was akin to coming out of a tube station and suddenly finding himself in a strange and unfamiliar location.

“Christ! I need a blasted map,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”