Ark (22 page)

Gene laughed. “Well, his own son does call him the loony.”

“On the other hand,” said Jim cautiously, “I wouldn’t cross the man. He just wants everything to go right. I mean, think about it. He was about to retire and suddenly the assignment of a lifetime unfolds right in his lap.”

“The General was already retired when he got notification that Thunderbolt was on,” said Gene. “He chose the job.”

“I guess.” Jim nodded agreement as he looked around the workshop. The gold had indeed arrived. Already a large machine was squeezing strips of the bright yellow metal between steel rollers. Each time the metal made a pass, it was a bit thinner. Days from now most of it would be thin enough to use to gild the ark and all the other furniture of the Tabernacle.

Jim was in awe. “This is amazing! It’s really happening!”

#

Though Jim felt compelled to hang around and watch Aaron begin work, he wanted to explore the whole shop. After all, the ark was just one piece of furniture, albeit the most fascinating.

At the door a long sheet of gold was being wheeled into the room. “Right on time. There’s our Mercy Seat.” Gene said, adding that it was an eighth inch thick, thirty-two inches wide, and about a hundred fifty inches long.

At first Jim thought the piece was way too long, but he realized that his design called for the sheet metal to be bent twice so that two ends formed a near perfect half circle. It took four men to lift the sheet onto the workbench next to the half-cylinder form that Aaron would use to work it. When it was seated to Aaron’s satisfaction on the table he immediately began to glue a tissue paper stencil of the flattened Mercy Seat onto it.

“How will they cut the form out of the gold?” asked Jim.

“With a laser,” replied an assistant, a woman who until now had stood mutely by, lending a helping hand when necessary. She was dressed in the same sparkling yellow and white outfits as the rest of the workers. She smiled when Jim looked at her.

“You specialize in lasers?” asked Jim.

“She is Marta Kohlmetz,” offered Aaron. “Our metallurgist from Switzerland”

“I love the simplicity of the design,” Marta said. “Egyptian, and yet not, at the same time. Three rows of feathers and a long sweeping back that forms the spine.”

“Thanks, Marta,” said Aaron. “It’s a simple design. I didn’t know what to do at first, so I ended up thinking of the Egyptians training the Hebrew people. I think they were used to doing things a certain way, but now – following edicts from Moses, they wanted it to be different. Still, a wing is a wing. A flat piece of hammered gold. There’s only so much decorating one could do.”

Jim smiled confidently at Aaron. “I think you’re on track,” he said. “Your reasoning is sound. What do the historians say?”

“They didn’t help much,” Aaron replied.

“Most of the ancient Israelite work was of wood, long since decayed and gone,” Gene offered. “Aaron’s guess is as good as anyone’s.”

Aaron bent over the long flat sheet of glittering metal and began smoothing the paper pattern.

“And his name is Aaron,” said Marta. She reached over the work bench and pulled down a stainless metal wand attached to a large boom closer to the table top. Jim guessed it was the laser.

The General appeared out of nowhere, shouting, “Don’t cut anything vital off with that thing, Kohlmetz.”

Marta looked at General Wilcox with an expression that said she’d heard that before. She stood by and waited a moment for more orders. With none given, she continued to adjust the laser boom.

Moments later Lieutenant Bush entered the shop and handed some papers to the General. “The transmitters are being installed, Sir. Level A Prime is complete but level B is having wiring problems.” Irwin nodded to Gene and Jim and then to Aaron. “How’re you guys doing?”

They all smiled at Ir; everyone but General Wilcox, of course. His face was wearing its usual ‘I smell a fart’ expression. It used to intimidate Jim but now, particularly since the General had given him full license to speak his mind, Jim was almost beginning to like it. He saw it as the General’s peptic persona, and it now amused him. To everyone else, however, General Wilcox was the man with the whip. Even his son seemed vulnerable to the General’s relentlessly critical eye.

John Wilcox hadn’t been with them on the tram, and Jim and Gene expected him to be in the cavern when they arrived. “Where’s John, Sir?” asked Jim.

“Going back home,” replied the General coarsely. “Making himself useful somewhere, I hope.”

“Will he be back?” asked Gene.

The General looked at Gene blankly and then faced the table without bothering to answer. “We’re proceeding nicely, Aaron, I take it?”

Aaron and Marta were bringing the laser into position over the gold. “Yes, Sir,” said Aaron. “We’re about to make the first cut.”

The thickness of the Mercy Seat’s gold was something Jim had wondered about for years. “I’m curious, Aaron,” he began. “How did you arrive at a thickness for the gold sheet?”

“Trial and error with a piece of gold,” said Aaron. “It’s just thick enough to permanently hold its shape against the force of gravity, but light enough to allow minimum weight and hold it’s shape. Your drawings showed the cherubim’s wings coming together but not touching, as the Bible says. It’s a small detail but an important one, I think.” As he spoke Aaron slowly lowered the laser closer to the target. “I considered that when I tested the gold,” he continued. “They wouldn’t want to have the parabola start bending over time. The beating of the gold will stiffen it and then I will make the wings.”

“How long will that take?” asked the General.

“A few days,” said Aaron. “First we cut the shape, then bend it. Then we’ll put it on the wooden form and shape the parabola by hammering it.”

The General nodded and pointed to the other side of the workshop. “I see that the gold leaf will start coming out soon. See that box those two carpenters are finishing? That’s the rest of our ark.”

Jim, Gene and the General left Aaron, Marta and their laser to take a closer look at the carpentry work. When they got close enough Jim could see that the box had already been assembled. The blonde wood had been mitered, glued and clamped.

The two men working on the box nodded to the General but continued their work. The area had the pungent smell of hot glue and acacia sawdust.

As they watched the two carpenters began measuring prefabricated molding to fit around the bottom edge of the box. Jim noticed that copies of his ark drawings were lying on the work bench. It made him feel more like a contributor than just an observer.

The General made very few comments as they toured the work areas. In the next room the spicy smell of acacia dust was even more intense. Several carpenters were assembling square columns for the interior of the Tabernacle. There were nine pillars in all.

A few workmen were matching large disk shaped pedestals to the bases of the pillars. Then they numbered them and put them aside in one pile or another. Gene commented that the work seemed to be going faster than expected.

They passed through several large rooms where millwork of various kinds was being performed. Jim commented finally that he saw little evidence of metallurgy.

“Anything that could be built off site was,” said the General. “The best thing about acacia wood is its lightness. It’s been an easy wood to work, but not all that easy to find. Three thousand years ago it was all over the Middle East. Now it’s not so cheap.

“Goat hair was another problem,” he added. “There’s plenty of goats but nobody orders the hair. We finally got it from Afghanistan, but they wanted to make the cloth there. So we sent agents who made sure that everything was the right size. It was a big deal, it turned out. Everybody wanted to know why the U.S. wanted fabric made from goat hair. Not that it was a political issue,” the General laughed. “They were just curious.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Jim.

“Floor mats for armored vehicles,” said the General. “Anyway, they arrive today.”

“So, how much of the material is being made off site?” asked Gene.

“We could have had all of it made off site, but we restricted it to 40%.”

“May I ask why?” asked Gene.

“We didn’t want anybody to recognize the shopping list,” answered the General. “What Uncle Sam buys is always of interest. The goat hair thing taught us a big lesson. Questions to our diplomats. It was stupid.”

Jim laughed. “So what did you do?”

“We bought everything else through a second party, or subcontracted it. The silver came from the Denver Mint. No problem there. Likewise the bronze, but the goat hair and acacia were dead giveaways, we thought. So we had to be very surreptitious. Still, someone’s bound to notice that a lot of acacia has been purchased. We think it’ll be written off as coincidence.”

“It’s interesting how everybody’s expectations were off the mark,” observed Jim. “Seems it’s been like that with me from the beginning. Every time I tried to put one foot in front of the other I’d find myself on a new path.” He looked around and noticed that all eyes were on him. He felt embarrassed.

“Sorry, General,” said Jim. “You were saying ...?”

“No, apologies, Wilson. Remember what I told you.”

Jim nodded but said nothing. He certainly remembered the General telling him not to hold back any commentary, but Jim wasn’t an outspoken person. Opinionated, yes, but he was never one to shoot his mouth off in front of strangers. Now, unlike anyone else, he had a license to kill, so to speak. He felt like a loaded gun unsure of where to aim.

Gene noticed Jim’s embarrassment. “I’ve had the same perceptions. It’s almost like Murphy is running the show.”

“Murphy.” The General chuckled. “Runs the military. So what else is new?”

The group continued their tour and eventually came back to the Gold Room, as the General called it. Aaron and Marta had just begun the cut. Sparks showered from the workbench as the laser’s green light cut unerringly into the sheet of gold.

Jim noticed that neither Aaron nor Marta Kohlmetz were touching any controls.

“If you are going to watch you’ll need protective glasses,” Marta warned them. “There are extras under the workbench.”

Jim noticed that she was watching the screen of a laptop computer. Jim knew something about computers, so he joined Marta to see what she was doing. When he got close enough he could see that the program she was running controlled the laser.

“I see,” said Jim, “you’re running a CAD program.”

“You know of this?” she said in a delightful Swiss accent.

“I do computer graphics,” said Jim. “You know. Quark. Photoshop. Illustrator.”

“Please put these on,” said Marta, as she handed Jim a pair of dark glasses. “An artist needs to protect his eyes, no?”

“I guess so,” said Jim as he slipped on the nearly opaque sunglasses. He looked at the laser. It had already completed nearly half the cut and was following the line on the tissue drawing exactly. The tiny spot of bright light moved at a steady one centimeter per second as a shower of sparks sprayed in all directions.

“You’re blasting some of the gold to smithereens,” commented Jim.

Marta looked at him. “What is a smithereen?”

“The smallest possible particle of matter,” said Jim with a straight face. “It’s related to lint.”

“Lint?” said Marta. Then she laughed. “You are a jokester, no?”

“Only around beautiful ladies,” quipped Jim.

The laser continued its cut until it finally met its starting point and the entire piece of gold sprang from the sheet with a sharp metallic clang. Jim noticed that the edge looked squared off and finished. He ran his thumb along the cut. It was smooth and cool to the touch.

“Very impressive.”

When Jim turned around the General was behind him. When their eyes met the General smiled but made no comment.

Jim decided to test the General’s own rule and spoke his mind. “Any problem, General?”

The muscles around the General’s eyes changed but he managed to maintain a smile. “Coming along nicely, Wilson. Thank you.” The General moved away but Jim, a bit perplexed by the General’s response, wouldn’t let it go. “What does that mean?”

The General stopped walking and turned sideways to Jim. Then he signaled for Jim to join him a respectable distance from the rest of the group.

Jim knew he was might get a tongue lashing, but he figured it was worth it if it would bring the problem between him and the General to a head. “Is there an issue?” the General asked.

“I don’t understand your behavior toward me or Gene, for that matter. Why were you so hard on him before?”

“I thought I made that clear, Mr. Wilson,” said the General. “Seemed like Henson was putting ideas in your head. With anyone else, okay, no problem, but you are here to give US ideas, not the other way around. Is that simple enough for you?”

“I don’t see what ideas I could contribute beyond those represented in my drawings,” replied Jim. “Is this Freud, here, or is this an ark recreation?”

“Didn’t you hear a voice?” asked the General.

“Just now? Where?” said Jim.

“No, earlier. Years ago. When you were working in New York?”

Jim stared at the General, dumfounded. “Where do you ... who told you ...?”

“I know everything about you, Mr. Wilson,” said the General. “Everything. I know about that scar on your dick. I know your wife kicked her cocaine habit.”

“Bullshit!” said Jim. “She never had ...”

“She never told you,” said General Wilcox. “No problem. It’s history.”

Jim felt his knees go weak.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to have this conversation, Wilson. But it was your choice. I think you are a sensitive, Jim,” said the General. “I know what I say may hurt, but it doesn’t bother me. I do what I need to do to get the job done. That’s why they wouldn’t let me retire. That’s why I’m here.”

The General took a few steps away, then turned and came back to Jim’s side.

“Do you think I am enjoying this? Rethink that, friend. I could be on a fucking beach in Bimini. I should be, but I’m here. I’m here kicking you in the nuts so you’ll be a good civilian and do your country a favor.”