Contract With God (30 page)

‘I don’t understand it, Doc. I really don’t. Why the hell are you working for them?’

‘The same reason my father put up with jail for ten years: because Israel comes first.’

‘Another crazy person, just like Fowler.’

‘You still haven’t told me how the two of you know each other.’

Andrea’s voice darkened. That memory was not exactly pleasant.

‘In April of 2005 I went to Rome to cover the death of the Pope. By chance I got hold of a tape in which a serial killer said he had killed a couple of cardinals who were to be part of the conclave electing the successor to John Paul II. The Vatican tried to suppress the story and I ended up on the roof of a building fighting for my life. Let’s say that Fowler made sure I didn’t end up splattered on the pavement. But in the process, he made off with my exclusive.’

‘I understand. That must have been frustrating.’

Andrea didn’t have a chance to reply. There was a tremendous blast outside that shook the walls of the tent.

‘What was that?’

‘For a moment I thought it was . . . No, it couldn’t be—’ Doc stopped in mid-sentence.

There was a scream.

And another.

And then many more.

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

 

 

Outside there was chaos.

‘Bring the buckets.’

‘Take them over there.’

Jacob Russell and Mogens Dekker were shouting contradictory orders in the middle of a river of mud that was flowing from one of the water trucks. A giant hole in the back of the tank was spewing out precious water, turning the ground around it into thick reddish sludge.

Several of the archaeologists, Brian Hanley and even Father Fowler ran from one place to the other in their underwear, attempting to form a chain with buckets in order to salvage as much of the water as they could. Little by little, the rest of the sleepy members of the expedition joined them.

Someone - Andrea wasn’t certain who it was because the person was covered in mud from head to toe - was trying to build a wall of sand near Kayn’s tent to block the river of mud that was heading towards it. He sank the shovel again and again in the sand but before long he was shovelling mud so he stopped. Luckily the billionaire’s tent was on slightly higher ground and Kayn didn’t have to leave his retreat.

Meanwhile, Andrea and Doc had dressed quickly and had joined the chain with the other latecomers. As they handed empty buckets back and sent full ones forward, the reporter realised that what she and Doc had been doing before the explosion was the reason why they were the only ones who had bothered to put on all their clothing before coming out.

‘Get me a welding torch,’ Brian Hanley was shouting from the front of the chain next to the tanker. The chain passed the command along, repeating his words like a litany.

‘There isn’t one,’ the chain signalled in reply.

Robert Frick was at the other end, well aware that with a torch and a large sheet of steel they could have soldered the hole, but he didn’t remember unpacking one and didn’t have time to look. He had to find some way of storing the water they were managing to save but couldn’t find anything large enough.

Suddenly it occurred to Frick that the large metal containers they had used to transport the equipment could hold water. And if they carried these closer to the river of water, they could collect more. The Gottlieb twins, Marla Jackson and Tommy Eichberg lifted one of the boxes and tried to carry it over towards the leak but the last few feet were impossible as their feet lost traction on the slippery ground. Even so, they did manage to fill two of the containers before the water pressure began to weaken.

‘It’s emptying out now. Let’s try to cover the hole.’

With the water nearing the level of the hole, they were able to improvise a stopper using several feet of waterproof canvas. Three people were pushing on the canvas, but the hole was so large and irregular that all it did was slow down the leak.

After half an hour, the result was disappointing.

‘I think we’ve managed to save about 475 gallons out of the 8,700 that were left in the tank,’ said Robert Frick, dispirited, his hands shaking with exhaustion.

Most of the members of the expedition were milling around in front of the tents. Frick, Russell, Dekker and Harel were next to the tanker.

‘I’m afraid there’ll be no more showers for anyone,’ Russell said. ‘We have enough water for ten days if we allocate just over twelve pints per person. Will that be enough, Doctor?’

‘It’s getting hotter each day. By noon it’ll reach 110 degrees. That’s going to be suicide for anyone working out in the sun. Not to mention holding at least some back for personal hygiene.’

‘And don’t forget we have to cook,’ said Frick, evidently worried. He loved soup and could envisage himself eating nothing but sausages in the coming days.

‘We’ll have to manage,’ Russell said.

‘What if it takes longer than ten days to complete the job, Mr Russell? We should fetch more water from Aqaba. I doubt that it will compromise the success of the mission.’

‘Dr Harel, I’m sorry to inform you, but I’ve learned from the ship’s radio that Israel has been at war with Lebanon for the past four days.’

‘Really? I had no idea,’ Harel lied.

‘Every radical group in the region is supporting the war. Can you imagine what would happen if a local merchant happened to tell the wrong person that he’d sold water to some Americans running around in the desert? Being low on water and dealing with the intruders who killed Erling would be the least of our problems.’

‘I understand,’ Harel said, aware that her opportunity to get Andrea out of there had vanished. ‘But don’t complain when everyone starts getting heat stroke.’

‘Fuck!’ said Russell, venting his frustration by kicking one of the truck’s tyres. Harel could hardly recognise Kayn’s assistant. He was covered in mud, his hair was wild and a disturbing look on his face belied his usual demeanour,
the masculine version of Bree Van de Kamp
⁶
, as Andrea said, always calm and unflappable. It was the first time she had heard him curse.

‘I was just warning you,’ Doc replied.

‘What’s up, Dekker? Do you have any idea what happened here?’ Kayn’s assistant turned his attention to the South African commander.

Dekker, who hadn’t said a word since the pitiful attempt to salvage some of their water supply, was kneeling at the back of the water truck studying the enormous hole in the metal.

‘Mr Dekker?’ Russell repeated impatiently.

The South African stood up.

‘Take a look: a round hole in the middle of the truck. That’s easy to do. If that had been our only problem, we could have covered it with something.’ He pointed to an irregular line that ran across the hole. ‘But this line complicates matters.’

‘What do you mean?’ Harel asked.

‘Whoever did this put a thin line of explosives on the tank which, together with the pressure of the water inside, made the metal bend out instead of bending in. Even if we’d had a welding torch, we couldn’t have covered the hole. This is the work of an artist.’

‘Terrific! We’re dealing with fucking Leonardo da Vinci,’ Russell said, shaking his head.

QUESTION
: Professor Forrester, there’s something I’m very curious about, and it’s the supposed supernatural occurrences that have been associated with the Ark of the Covenant.

 

ANSWER
: We’re back to that.

 

Q
: Professor, there is a series of unexplained phenomena cited in the Bible, like that light—

 

A
: It’s not ‘that light’. It’s the
Shekinah
, God’s presence. You must speak respectfully. And yes, Jews believed that there was a luminescence that appeared between the cherubim from time to time, a clear sign that God was within.

 

Q
: Or the Israelite who fell dead after touching the Ark. Do you really believe God’s power resides in the relic?

 

A
: Ms Otero, you have to understand that 3,500 years ago, human beings had a different conception of the world and an entirely different way of relating to it. If Aristotle, who is closer to us by more than a thousand years, saw the Heavens as a bunch of concentric spheres, imagine what the Jews thought about the Ark.

 

Q
: I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Professor.

 

A
: It’s merely a question of scientific method. In other words, a rational explanation - or rather, the absence of such a thing. The Jews couldn’t explain how a golden chest could appear to shine with its own independent light, so they limited themselves to giving a name and a religious explanation for a phenomenon that was beyond Antiquity’s comprehension.

 

Q
: And what is the explanation, Professor?

 

A
: Have you heard of the Baghdad Battery? No, of course not. It’s not something you’d hear about on TV.

 

Q
: Professor . . .

 

A
: The Baghdad Battery is a series of artefacts found in a museum in the city in 1938. It was composed of clay vessels, inside of which were copper cylinders, held in place by asphalt, each containing an iron rod. In other words, the whole thing was a primitive but effective electrochemical instrument that was used to coat different objects in copper through electrolysis.

 

Q
: That’s not so surprising. In 1938 that technology was almost ninety years old.

 

A
: Ms Otero, if you’d let me continue, you wouldn’t sound like such an idiot. The researchers who analysed the Baghdad Battery discovered that it originated in ancient Sumer, and managed to date it back to 2500 BC. That is a thousand years before the Ark of the Covenant and forty-three centuries before Faraday, the man who supposedly invented electricity.

 

Q
: And the Ark was similar?

 

A
: The Ark was an electrical condenser. The design was very intelligent, allowing the accumulation of static electricity: two gold plates separated by an insulating layer of wood, but joined by the two golden cherubim that acted like positive and negative terminals.

 

Q
: But if it was a condenser, how did it store electricity?

 

A
: The answer is fairly prosaic. The objects in the Tabernacle and the Temple were made of leather, linen and goat hair, three of five materials that can generate the greatest amount of static electricity. Under the right conditions, the Ark could release about two thousand volts. It makes sense that the only ones who could touch it were the ‘chosen few’. You can bet the chosen few had very thick gloves.

Q
: So you insist that the Ark didn’t come from God?

 

A
: Ms Otero, nothing could be further from my intention. What I’m saying is that God asked Moses to keep the commandments in a safe place so they could be venerated for centuries to come and be the central aspect of the Jewish faith. And that human beings have invented artificial ways of keeping the legend of the Ark alive.

 

Q
: What about other disasters, like the collapse of the walls of Jericho, the storms of sand and fire that wiped out whole cities?

 

A
: Invented stories and myths.

 

Q
: So you reject the idea that the Ark can bring disasters in its wake?

 

A
: Absolutely.

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

 

 

Eighteen minutes before she died, Kyra Larsen was thinking about baby wipes. It was a kind of mental reflex. Not long after she had given birth to little Bente two years before, she had discovered the advantages of the little towels that were always moist and left a nice smell.

The other advantage was that her husband hated them.

It wasn’t that Kyra was a bad person. But for her, one of the fringe benefits of marriage consisted in noticing small cracks in her husband’s defences and sticking a few barbs in them to see what would happen. Right now Alex would be contending with quite a few baby wipes because he had to take care of Bente until the expedition was over. Kyra would return triumphant, with the satisfaction of having scored real points against Mr They’ve-made-me-a-partner-at-the-law-firm.

Two days before, when an exhausted Kyra had heard Jacob Russell say that they would have to step up the work and that there would be no more showers, she had thought she could put up with anything. Nothing would get in the way of her making a name for herself as an archaeologist. Unfortunately, reality and what a person imagines do not always coincide.

Stoically, she had put up with the humiliation of the search that took place after the attack on the water truck. She had stood there, covered in mud from head to toe, and watched as the soldiers went through her papers and her underwear. Many people on the expedition had protested, but they had all been relieved when the search was over and nothing had been found. The morale of the group had been greatly altered by recent events.

‘At least it’s not one of us,’ David Pappas had said, once the lights went out and fear invaded every shadow. ‘We can take comfort in that.’