Covenant (7 page)

The senator rubbed his temples wearily.

“Being a member of a church is not the same thing as being a member of an administration. I can’t be seen endorsing a man who favors war. If I go into the primaries on that ticket, I won’t last five minutes.”

Patterson’s eyes transformed into tiny, probing points of ice that pierced Black’s soul.

“I had no idea your faith was built on such weak foundations.”

Senator Black raised his chin as he spoke.

“The American people will watch the news tonight and see me as a member of a church that preaches hate. Despite what you seem to think, not every American wants a theocracy.”

“Are you sure? Fifty percent of all Americans believe the Bible to be the literal truth. They know that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, that it was created by God, and that His judgment upon us is soon to be realized. All of the prophecies support it, Isaiah.”

“Prophecies don’t win elections,” Black muttered, crossing the room and sitting on a brown leather chair. “The people are not going to support a president who is so openly associated with …” He struggled for a suitable word.

“Fundamentalists?” Patterson suggested with a mocking smile.

“Conservatives. We’ve been down that path before.”

Patterson adopted a soothing tone, sitting on the edge of his desk.

“Don’t be so dismissive of the Word, Isaiah. The Second Coming, the End Times and the Rapture are all preceded by what we see in the world around us today. The revival of Israel as a nation, witnessed by the last generation before Christ in the parable of the fig tree—Matthew Twenty-four. A strong and united European state, or a United States of Europe similar to a revived Roman Empire—Daniel Two. The role of the European Union in the Middle East, the Antichrist, and the peace treaty—Revelation Thirteen. The mark of the beast, in commerce, so that none can buy or sell without the mark, which is the UPC bar-code system whose bars are encoded as three groups of six: the number of the beast—Revelation Thirteen.”

Black shook his head. “I think that you place far too much faith in ancient texts.”

The pastor smiled again. “Peter Three—the Apostle says that in the End Times even religious people would dismiss the idea of Christ’s return.”

Black looked the pastor straight in the eye.

“My allegiance is to this country and its Constitution. I cannot be seen to openly favor one faith above another.”

Patterson kept his expression neutral.

“Yet this country is one nation under God, Isaiah. Look around us, at what is happening to our world. America is crumbling beneath the weight of crime, corruption, and societal decline caused by atheists and secularists. America is rotting from within and God is the only one who can save us.”

“One nation under God indeed,” Black echoed. “Yet our crumbling America is the most religious of all the world’s democracies, which kind of lets the atheists off the hook.”

A stab of indignation punctured Patterson’s studied calm. “God is the light, not the darkness. Only a lack of faith can see His light deflected from a true path.”

“I can’t support your church any further if you continue with these inflammatory speeches,” Black said firmly, standing.

Patterson regarded Black for a long moment, masking his fury at the senator’s resilience. A man who had survived the political machine due to his popularity with ordinary folk, hockey moms, and liberals, Isaiah Black had always been a more pliable man in time of need. He decided to turn the screws up a notch.

“The voters may not forgive you lightly, Isaiah.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you turn your back on us, then you turn your back on God and abandon any chance of redemption. I command the allegiance of thirty million faithful Americans, Isaiah. They do not vote for a president or a party, they vote for God, and if you abandon us, then I’ll make damn sure that ten percent of this country’s voters abandon
you.
”

Senator Black’s jaw dropped open. “You can’t control voters like that.”

The pastor shook his head slowly, a smile creasing his thin lips.

“Can you afford to take the risk? I would suggest that you ask yourself something, Isaiah. What matters more to you: misguided government policy or your place as the president of the United States of America?”

Senator Black ground his teeth.

“I have blood to give,” he said, and turned for the door.

“We too are prepared to shed blood, to seal the covenant between man and God,” Patterson said after him, “no matter what the consequences.”

AUGUST 25

T
he woman stared at him from across the street, her hair in disarray, her wrists bound, guns wedged into her side as she was wrestled into a battered sedan by masked men. Ethan shouted at her, but his voice was muted. He ran toward her, but his legs refused to move, dragging like lead weights beneath him. He saw her scream in desperation, and he heard a strange whining noise assault his ears as the world shuddered beneath his feet.

Ethan’s eyes blinked open, the turbulence shuddering through the aircraft jolting him awake.

He stared out of his window as the Boeing 737 turned steeply over the sparkling azure Mediterranean. The coast of Israel drifted past five thousand feet below beneath a scattering of cloud, and to the north he could see the metallic sprawl of Tel Aviv glinting through the early-morning haze. His eyes ached, and he realized that he had drifted into sleep, the first time since taking off some seven hours previously.

Beside him Rachel Morgan sat in catatonic silence, as she had done for the past four hours. Ethan had spent half of his life crammed into aircraft flying from one godforsaken war zone to another, and had hated the narcissistic chatter of journalists from a dozen countries sharing their unwanted opinions on whatever crisis they were heading to document. Rachel’s silence had been initially a great relief. Now, he suspected that there was something more to it, emphasized by the empty seat between them.

“We’re descending,” he said in a vague attempt to provoke conversation.

“So it would seem.”

He tried again.

“You ever been to the Middle East before?”

“Only when family members go missing.”

“Is that some kind of joke?” Ethan snapped.

Rachel’s eyes swiveled to peer sideways at him. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood for talking right now.”

“Is there some kind of problem here, with me?”

“Should there be?”

“You’ve barely spoken since we met, and if this trip is going to achieve anything at all, I need your help.” Ethan leaned across the empty seat between them. “If we can’t work together and start uncovering what happened to Lucy, you know what will happen?”

“What will happen?”

“Nothing at all.”

Rachel stared ahead for a few moments before replying. “I’m not comfortable with the idea of running around a foreign country with someone I don’t know anything about and who clearly has problems of his own.”

“You think I want to be cooped up on an airliner bound for the Middle East?” Ethan challenged. “I was perfectly happy where I was.”

“Is that so?” Rachel said. “You see, that’s my point. Even Doug admitted to me that you’re troubled, and whether that’s because of whatever happened to you out here or not is irrelevant. If you’re unable to help yourself, then what use are you to me or to Lucy?”

Ethan struggled to erect a harbor of dignity around his shame.

“Do you think Doug would have asked me here if he thought that?”

“By his own admission, there was nobody else he
could
ask.”

Ethan gave up and stared out of the window. “Glad I could help.”

For a long time Rachel sat staring into space, but eventually she glanced across at him.

“Look, I appreciate you being here.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said quietly. “As you’ve pointed out neither of us has much of a choice, so why don’t we just get on with it?”

Rachel stared at him for a long moment with an unconvinced expression. “Fine.”

“I need you to tell me everything you can about your daughter and what she was up to out here.”

“Lucy was born in 1981, but her father Robert died when she was fourteen.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So were we,” Rachel said, her voice softening. “He died before his time. I’ve questioned a thousand times what would make God take someone from us, but I’ve never found an answer.”

“You’re Catholic,” Ethan guessed.

“I’m a theologian. You?”

Ethan held up his hands. “I’m on the fence, doesn’t interest me much.”

Rachel looked away, but he saw a ghost of a smile touch her lips. “You’d have liked Robert then. He was a humanist.”

Ethan blinked.

“A humanist, a theologian, and a scientist? Family dinners must have literally been a riot.”

Rachel smiled again and Ethan watched as her green eyes blossomed briefly with light, but the moment vanished as quickly as it had come and the smile melted away.

“How on earth did you and Robert meet?”

“He was a friend of a friend. We met at a barbeque, and he bet me ten bucks that I couldn’t convert him from his humanism over a dinner date.”

“Nice move,” Ethan said.

“It was.”

Rachel’s features were no longer strained, and though she continued to stare straight ahead Ethan could see that her mind was wandering among the phantasms of the past. She barely noticed the mechanical grind of the aircraft’s undercarriage coming down somewhere beneath them. Ethan glanced briefly out of the window at the fields and palm groves sweeping past beneath the Boeing’s flexing wing tips.

“How did Lucy end up in Israel?”

“She had been doing field research in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley near Nairobi, before moving to the Hebrew University under a new posting. She’d been awarded a grant for new research into early human evolution and was being mentored by someone called Hans Karowitz, a Belgian scientist, and a cosmologist called Hassim Khan.”

Ethan made a mental note of the names.

“Okay, so why don’t you tell me what was so important about what she found out there?”

“It was an unknown species of human,” Rachel began, “that hasn’t yet been classified by science and—”

“That the Defense Intelligence Agency for some reason wants to recover?” Ethan challenged. “I need to know everything, or this is all for nothing.”

Rachel sighed.

“They asked me not to reveal it to you unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“Is finding your daughter alive absolutely necessary?” Ethan asked.

Rachel closed her eyes and nodded before speaking softly.

“The remains that Lucy found were in a tomb estimated to have been about seven thousand years old,” she said. “But the remains were not human.”

“Not human?” Ethan echoed. “They said that the bones were humanoid.”

“Yes, they were.”

The aircraft around Ethan seemed to recede as he tried to grasp what Rachel was saying.

“So it was some kind of ape?”

“It was a species that did not originate or evolve on this planet,” Rachel said.

Ethan dragged a hand down his face, trying to conceal his disbelief.

“An alien,” he said finally. “That’s why they’re sending the DIA after Lucy, because they think she found E.T. camping in Israel and they want possession of the remains.”

“It’s the only reason they’re willing to take an interest in this case at all,” she said sadly. “If it weren’t for what Lucy found, do you think the DIA would invest in a search for her? They wouldn’t give a damn. This is about the remains, not Lucy.”

Ethan leaned his head back against his seat and chuckled in disbelief.

“I’m being sent halfway across the world to dig up some bones for the DIA,” he murmured, “that’ll probably turn out to have belonged to a frickin’ rhinocerous or something.”

Rachel shot him a toxic look.

“My daughter is still missing out there, whatever you think about this, and she’s smart enough to be able to tell a rhino from a human.”

Ethan shook himself from his torpor of disbelief.

“Okay, indulge me. Why would she have found something like that out there?”

“There’s a big problem in human history that nobody has been able to explain,” Rachel said. “The ancestors of modern humans, people essentially identical to us in every way, had existed in a hunter-gatherer state for at least sixty thousand years. But suddenly, out of nowhere, mankind began building cities, forming agriculture and producing advanced technologies. And that growth blossomed simultaneously in vastly separated geographical areas, from the Indus Valley to the Levant to the Americas.”

Ethan leaned back in his seat.

“Surely that’s just natural growth after the end of the Ice Ages?”

Rachel shook her head.

“There had been some developments, of course: simple dwellings, domestication of animals, and rudimentary agriculture. But then the people of the Indus Valley in today’s Pakistan began the construction of major cities around five thousand years ago. At the same time the Sumerians began to build cities in Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The point is that there is no record of gradual development or progression—the cities sprang up almost instantaneously. Both civilizations supposedly independently invented the wheel and a script called cuneiform. The Indus Valley script, known as Dravidian, hasn’t been fully deciphered even today.”