Was he purposefully trying to provoke her?
Hunter intervened with a slight smile. “Dr Curzon, let me assure you, you’re among friends here.” He tapped the DIA file. “We know you followed in your father’s footsteps, and that after graduating you worked for a number of years with the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.”
Ava could feel the tension in the room mounting.
Was that what this was about?
“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” she replied. Despite the unwanted memories, her voice stayed calm. “And I don’t particularly want to, either.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“You were top of your intake.” It was Ferguson again. “I see you were the first ever female MI6 officer to work in theatre on an operation with the Increment. That’s also very impressive.” There was a look of genuine curiosity on his face. “Why did you leave?”
She shook her head. “I said I can’t talk about it. Let’s just say I’d had enough.” It was more than she wanted to say, but it was the truth.
“So you returned to your first love,” he continued. “Archaeology?”
She nodded.
The woman to Hunter’s left cleared her throat. Looking over at her, Ava realized for the first time how tall she was, even sitting down.
“Dr Curzon, my name is Anna Prince,” the woman began. “I’m with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in DC. We’d like you to have a look at this.” Her accent was east coast—calm and precise.
The lighting above them dimmed, and the squat projector in the middle of the table hummed into life, throwing a dusty tunnel of light onto the far wall.
The projected image was of a golden box, about the size of a packing trunk.
Ava looked at it with professional interest, but it only took her a few milliseconds to recognize it.
“It’s a model of the Ark of the Covenant,” she said, feeling a bit absurd. She had not been flown to the largest American military base in the world outside the U.S. just to tell them that. Most of the GIs within its razor-wired perimeter could have said as much.
“What can you tell us about it?” Prince asked.
Ava looked at the picture more closely. “It’s a photograph of a model—an artist’s impression of what the Ark of the Covenant might have looked like.”
“Why just an impression?” Hunter asked, frowning. “What does the real one look like?”
Ava shook her head. “No one knows. There are no carvings, sculptures, or paintings. All recreations are just informed guesswork based on a brief description in the Bible.”
“What can you tell us about this particular model?” Prince asked. “Is there anything that jumps out?”
Ava looked back at the image glowing on the wall. “It’s hard to judge the scale, but it looks perhaps a bit larger than normal. More unusual, too. Most of today’s models are broadly similar, but I haven’t seen one quite like this before.” She picked up the laser pointer on the table. “May I?”
Hunter nodded.
Ava aimed the pinprick of light at the two winged statues dominating the Ark’s golden lid.
“From an artistic point of view, this model has some unique features. For instance, the angels on the lid, called cherubim, are atypical. It’s a poor quality photograph, and I can’t see them clearly because their wings are in the way, but it looks like there’s a hint of something Egyptian there.”
“Egyptian?” Prince asked, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Ava replied, “the artist is a clear thinker, and not someone who sheepishly follows the crowd. Most people depict the cherubim as Christian angels—like on greetings cards and in church windows. But, of course, according to the legend, the Hebrews built the Ark in the desert on their return from a hundred years of slavery in Egypt. So it would be logical for the Ark to have Egyptian influences—especially because, many experts believe, the ancient Hebrews didn’t have their own artistic style.”
Ava put the laser pointer down, not really sure what they wanted her to say.
“Legend?” Prince asked. Unless Ava was misreading it, there was a note of surprise in her voice. “You said the Exodus, when the Hebrews wandered in the desert and built the Ark, was a legend?”
Ava nodded. She knew this was a sensitive topic for many people. “The truth is,” she answered, “no one knows for sure. The vast majority of events in the Bible are uncorroborated by independent texts or archaeological evidence. Scholars are divided on whether the adventures of the ancient Hebrews chronicled in the Bible ever really happened—whether figures like Abraham, Moses, David, or Solomon ever existed in the way they’re described, or at all. Even King Solomon’s Temple isn’t universally accepted, as no evidence of it has ever been found.”
“The Bible stories never happened?” Hunter asked, unable to mask his curiosity.
“Not necessarily,” Ava replied. “For instance, each story may contain an embedded trace element of an ancient historical event, but over time it has been so interwoven and embroidered with the heroic and the supernatural that it’s no longer recognizable. It’s not an uncommon process. You see the same with the Norse myths, the adventures of Greek and Roman heroes and demigods, the Indian
Mahabharata
, and even folk stories like the tales of King Arthur and his knights of the round table.”
Hunter raised an eyebrow. “Well, Dr Curzon, you don’t disappoint. You clearly call it as you see it.” He eyed her carefully. “I like that.”
“But surely the Ark of the Covenant existed?” Prince pressed her.
Ava hesitated. There was a knack to finding the right balance with every audience. In her experience, discussing the Bible in the context of scholarship and science often proved a flammable mix.
“For those who believe in the Bible—” she began, but was cut short by Hunter.
“It’s okay,” he interrupted, “just give it to us straight.”
Ava nodded. “The Ark is attested many times in the Bible. In my view it, or something very like it, almost certainly existed. But we cannot be confident how, when, or where it was created, or what its purpose was.”
All of the people around the table were listening intently. Prince was making detailed notes.
“What did it do?” Hunter asked, tapping his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “I mean, what was it for?”
“Again, we only have the Bible for guidance,” Ava answered. “The Book of Exodus says the Hebrews used the Ark as a strongbox to carry the stones engraved with the Ten Commandments. They also put in it a pot of manna, the miraculous food that fell from the heavens as they crossed the desert. Another part of the Bible says that it also contained the ceremonial staff of Moses’s brother, Aaron, the first high priest.” Ava paused. “It was essentially their tribal treasure chest, a coffer containing key symbols of their cultural identity.”
“That’s it?” Ferguson asked. “Then why was it was so sacred, if it was just a decorated carrying case?”
Ava nodded. “There’s more. The lid was called the Mercy Seat. Yahweh, the Hebrews’ God, told them he would meet with them there, above the lid, between the wings of the cherubim, in order to give them instructions. That’s why it was thought to possess divine power, and why the Hebrews carried it into battle with them,” Ava paused. “As a divine object, access to it was strictly controlled. According to the Bible, on one occasion Yahweh killed fifty thousand and seventy people just for looking at it.”
Prince shifted in her seat.
“And it was kept in King Solomon’s Temple, right?” Hunter asked after a pause.
“Later,” Ava nodded. “If the Bible is correct, it was built around 1290 BC. At first, the wandering Hebrews kept it in a tent called the Tabernacle, which they pitched whenever they stayed anywhere for a period. But once King David had conquered Jerusalem and the Hebrews ceased to be a nomadic tribe, his son Solomon completed the first solid Temple around 957 BC, and placed the Ark in it as its most sacred treasure.”
“What happened?” Prince asked. “What became of it?”
Ava took a sip of the water Hunter passed her. “The Ark disappeared from history’s pages in 597 BC, when the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon razed Jerusalem to the ground in one of the most cataclysmic events ever to befall the Hebrews.”
“Babylon?” Prince frowned. “Wasn’t that in Mesopotamia or somewhere near there?”
“Mesopotamia is modern Iraq,” Ava confirmed. “Babylon is about fifty miles south of Baghdad.”
A silence fell across the table.
Ava had no idea what she had just said, or why the three of them were staring at her.
Hunter spoke next, this time slowly and deliberately, wrinkling his brow as he directed the question at her carefully.
“So, Dr Curzon, you’re telling us that a long time ago an Iraqi warlord sacked Jerusalem and took away the Hebrews’ most sacred religious object—their God’s throne?”
Ava was beginning to feel the strain of not knowing what this was about. “The Bible says Nebuchadnezzar razed Jerusalem and carried off all but the poorest people from the southern kingdom of Judah. He took them to Babylon, where they lived undisturbed, but in exile. Before leaving, he torched the Jerusalem Temple and melted down its great pillars and other bronze objects, and carried off all the booty to Babylon. There’s no specific record of what happened to the Ark, but Nebuchadnezzar looted everything of monetary or propaganda value—and the Ark must have been top of his list.”
She took another sip of the water. “But there are other legends, too. Contradictory ones. Like the Ark being kept in the Jerusalem Temple on a mechanical apparatus for lowering to safety into a subterranean tunnel system if ever danger loomed.”
There was another long pause.
Too long.
Ava was keenly aware the atmosphere in the room was becoming increasingly charged by the moment.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” she turned to Hunter. “Why are you so interested in the Ark’s history and this model?”
Hunter pursed his lips, interlacing his fingers. Fixing her with his grey eyes, he took a deep breath and sat forward in his chair. “Let’s just say this is now a military priority, and something we all need to learn about real quick.”
Ava could feel her palms growing moist.
Had she heard right?
She bunched her hands into fists under the table, and dug her nails into the flesh of her palms. She was barely aware of asking the next question.
She heard her voice, as if from a distance. “Where did this model come from?”
Hunter looked over at Prince. After a pause, the tall woman nodded slowly.
He turned back to Ava, placing his huge hands flat onto the table in front of him. “Dr Curzon, this is not a model in a museum. It’s a photograph, taken this morning by a hostile party in a warehouse in Kazakhstan. It comes to us with an assurance that it’s the real Ark of the Covenant, and with certain very serious political demands.”
Ava heard his words, but had trouble processing them. It was as if he was talking in slow motion.
Her mind whirred.
Was this some kind of elaborate hoax?
When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and cracked. She addressed the question to the whole table. “Are you telling me you believe this might really be the genuine Ark of the Covenant?”
Hunter fixed her with a hard stare and exhaled deeply. When he spoke, it was in a low and quiet voice. “That, Dr Curzon, is precisely what you’re going to tell us. The hostile party has said we can send an independent expert to verify the artefact. You just got the job. Major Ferguson here will go with you as your technical assistant.”
Ava’s head spun.
“Your plane leaves for Kazakhstan in forty minutes.” Hunter got up to leave. “Ms Prince will see you are provided with everything you need for your trip.”
A thousand questions flooded Ava’s mind.
“General, I’ll need lab conditions to examine the artefact—special lighting, tools and chemicals, photographic equipment—”
Hunter waved his hand dismissively as he opened the door for her. “I’m afraid none of that will be possible. You’ll be fully briefed on arrival in Astana. I believe you already know Peter DeVere. He’ll be joining you there, and he’ll fill you in.”
Despite the reassuring tone in Hunter’s voice, the effect the name had on Ava was anything but comforting. As she heard the words, she felt as if she had just been punched hard in the stomach.
——————— ◆ ———————
US Central Command
(USCENTCOM)
Camp as-Sayliyah
The State of Qatar
The Arabian Gulf
Prince had shown Ava to the visitors’ facilities so she could freshen up and take a hot shower.
Once the tall American had left, Ava headed for the ablutions area. It was basic—a heavily air-conditioned section of the large prefabricated hangar, indistinguishable from the rest of Camp as-Sayliyah.
Her head was buzzing as she stepped under the steaming jets of water.
Despite the outside temperature, she could feel her shoulders dropping as the hot water began to work out the tension that had been building ever since the escort of marines had arrived at her Baghdad office that morning.
With the steam rising around her, she tried to make sense of the bombshells General Hunter had dropped on her in the briefing room, and to calm the maelstrom they had set swirling inside her head.
She had been completely unprepared for the news that the American and British governments believed the historical Ark of the Covenant might be sitting at that moment in a Kazakh warehouse.
And she had been knocked sideways to learn that she had been chosen by them to go and evaluate it. The Ark was one of those objects that all archaeologists dreamed of, but none ever expected to see. She was still having difficulty digesting the information fully.
But the Ark aside, she had been equally overwhelmed to find out that an organization she had wanted nothing to do with for the last eight years now seemed to be back in her life. General Hunter had mentioned Peter DeVere, and if DeVere really was waiting for her in Kazakhstan, then it could only mean that MI6 was closely involved.
Her stomach tightened.
She had known DeVere for as long as she could remember. Throughout her childhood, he had been her father's most trusted friend in the Firm. He had become a frequent visitor to their home, and practically an adopted member of the family.
She tried to brush the memories away, but images kept flooding back from mid-December 2002. She and her father had left the house for work together as usual, both heading through the biting cold to the Firm’s colourful and iconic Babylonian-ziggurat headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. At the end of the day, as usual, she had returned home.
He never did.
The next time she saw him was at his snowy funeral a few days before Christmas, when she, her mother, and her brother buried the man they had all loved so much.
Dozens of his work colleagues had packed the intimate service at the triangular-windowed and white-blanketed Saxon church in the small Somerset village, but a wall of official silence had already descended around the exact circumstances of his death. ‘On her Majesty’s service’ was all the family was ever told.
And DeVere reminded her too painfully of that time. She had left the Firm not long after, severing all ties, disenchanted with its covert world for a growing number of reasons. DeVere had stayed on, and in the following years she had not been able to bring herself to see him.
The emotions were all still too raw.
As she shifted under the hot water, the sound of a jet coming in to land on the strip outside pulled her back to the present.
Aware her flight to Kazakhstan would take off soon, she quickly towelled herself dry and dressed. Before leaving, she gratefully drained the cup of black coffee Prince had left out for her, and polished off the two
Hooah!
energy bars lying beside it on the tray.
When she was done, she headed out onto the hot tarmac, still lost in thought.
Scanning the darkened desertscape that greeted her, she could see the outline of a jeep waiting to ferry her to the sleek military Learjet C-21A parked further out on the apron. In the gloom, she could just make out a shadowy ground crew finishing the refuelling and last minute checks.
Glancing at the rugged field watch she always wore, its illuminated hands told her it was just gone 8:00 p.m. The sun had set an hour and a half earlier, and she was surprised to feel the air temperature had barely changed.
She gazed up at the desert night sky, losing herself for a moment in its enormity. Unlike Baghdad, there was almost no light pollution, and the stars shone with spectacular brightness and clarity in the blue-black sky.
“So, what are the chances this Ark is real?”
She had not noticed Ferguson walk up beside her. He had changed for the trip, and was in a pair of blue jeans and a light jacket.
The same question had been gnawing away at her ever since Hunter told her why he had brought her to Qatar.
Like many starry-eyed and indomitable archaeology students, she had spent her first years at university dreaming of finding the Ark.
In the rare spare moments she had to herself between learning everything from ancient Egyptian human embalming techniques to the similarities between Genesis and the Babylonian
Epic of Gilgamesh
, she had fantasized about the Ark.
In her mind it had always topped the list of biblical archaeology’s greatest prizes—Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, King Solomon’s Temple, the Holy Grail dish used at the Last Supper, and the True Cross of the crucifixion. They were the greatest icons of western archaeology—elusive, quasi-mythical quests.
But as her student days had faded into memory and the professional archaeologist’s world of museums, libraries, private collections, and digs had increasingly consumed her, thoughts of these larger-than-life artefacts had receded to the realms of her youthful fantasies. For years now, like all experienced archaeologists, she had accepted they were not going to surface any time soon—still less on her watch.
So General Hunter’s revelation that a hostile group claimed to be holding the real Ark of the Covenant in Kazakhstan had reignited a spark in her that had lain dormant for many years. It was as if a childhood dream, long ago abandoned as make-believe, had suddenly come to life again—but this time for real.
She had never doubted the Ark had once existed. But she now felt herself being torn between two worlds. The seasoned professional in her was aware the Kazakh Ark was guaranteed to be a hoax—a waste of everyone’s time and effort, and quite possibly a highly dangerous venture. But the optimistic and exuberant young archaeologist in her had never quite died, and she was finding herself irresistibly drawn towards the thrill of being on a once-in-a-lifetime hunt for the genuine Ark of the Covenant.
“Well is it?” he asked. “Real?”
She dug her hands deeper into her pockets, enjoying the desert’s night-time breeze across her face. “Honestly?” She paused. “I don’t know. But if there’s the slightest chance it’s genuine, then we have to do whatever we can to prove it one way or the other.”
She was watching him, noticing his quick intelligent expressions as she was talking, as if he was taking in everything—not just what she was saying, but how she was saying it.
Intrigued by his curiosity, she turned the question back on him. “Why, what’s your interest in it?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter to me if it’s real or not. More important is who has it. In the wrong hands, a fake is just as dangerous if people believe it’s real.”
Ava raised her eyebrows. “Dangerous?” It was not a word she would have used to describe it. She very much doubted the tales of Yahweh striking down those who touched it.
Ferguson stopped walking, and turned to her. His tone was sombre. “We believe the group holding the Ark stole it to order. But we think they reneged on the deal and have now gone freelance, using the Ark for their own political ends.”
Ava returned his gaze. This was new information. “What sort of ends?”
He looked grim. “They’re threatening that unless we meet their demands, they’ll sell it to the Iranians, who will unquestionably use it in their propaganda war to humiliate the Israelis. Maybe the mullahs in Tehran will parade it in front of the international cameras as booty. Or perhaps they’ll destroy it on prime time global television. Either way, it’ll be received as an outrage to Israel and its allies.”
Ava did not need Ferguson to explain the implications any further. After all her years in the Middle East, she was acutely aware of the knife-edge relationships that kept the many delicate diplomatic balances from tipping over into chaos and carnage. She knew the Jerusalem-Tehran faultline was one of the most sensitive, and could instantly see how Iranian possession of the Ark, Israel’s former symbol of glory and might, would be cataclysmic.
She took a deep breath of hot night air. That explained the high-level military interest. This was not about archaeology. It was a political question of Israel and Iran, of the stability of the brittle region—and potentially the world.
As she and Ferguson neared the dark green jeep waiting to take them out to the Learjet, a desert-camouflaged open-backed Humvee coming the other way pulled up sharply beside them.
As the six-and-a-half-litre turbodiesel engine cut out, four uniformed and heavily armed U.S. soldiers jumped down from the back of its modified flatbed. A fifth stood on the vehicle’s back platform, beside a man shackled to the beige roll-bar fitted along the rear of the cab.
The man was Middle Eastern, Ava could immediately see, wearing crumpled black jeans, faded beige baseball boots, and a tired-looking ragged blue shirt, out of which was sticking an unusually long neck and a thin unshaved face. Even by the runway’s distant lights, he looked gaunt and haggard.
Squinting to see clearly, the soldier on the flatbed unlocked the man’s handcuffs from the roll-bar.
Suddenly, in a blur of confusion, she saw the man in the blue shirt snatch at the soldier’s chest, pulling a pistol from a holster set into the complex webbing of pouches and equipment bound around his torso.
With a speed that could only come from a massive surge of adrenaline, the man grabbed the startled soldier by the shoulder and spun him round, pinning the front of his chest against the roll-bar, jamming the pistol’s muzzle into the back of the infantryman’s shaved head just under the line of his desert-brown helmet.
Instantly, the scene around her erupted into pandemonium, and before she could react, she was pushed hard, face down onto the tarmac.
Winded, she looked up from her sprawling position to see the soldiers had all brought their black M-4 assault rifles up to the firing position, and were pointing their short but lethal barrels directly at the gunman.
Ferguson still had his left hand on Ava, but was rapidly rising from his crouch with a small steel-blue automatic pistol in his other, also trained on the gunman.
Everyone was yelling at once.
The gunman was shouting in Arabic, grinding the pistol hard into the back of his prisoner’s skull. The other soldiers were frantically ordering him to drop the weapon and release the hostage.
Despite the chaos, she could make out that the gunman was repeating the same phrase again and again, a look of desperation on his face. “
Rajj'ouni a'ala beiti! Rajj'ouni a'ala beiti!
”
As she watched, the soldiers continued to bellow over him, the strain audible in their voices as the tension mounted by the second.
Looking around quickly, she could instantly see that no one appeared to be in charge, and everyone was panicking. She knew from experience this was the type of situation that could rapidly go fatally wrong.
Pushing the hair back from her face, she looked up at the soldier nearest her. He was short, with close-cropped brown hair visible under his helmet at the temples. “Do you know what he’s saying?” she yelled, pointing to the gunman.
The soldier’s eyes swivelled to her. He tapped the side of his helmet with the first two fingers of a gloved hand, as if trying to get the earpiece to work properly. “No ma’am,” he answered crisply, “no interpreter.”
Ava rose to her knees.
“Down!” Ferguson pushed her back onto the tarmac again.
Surprised by the sudden movement, the gunman’s eyes flitted to her, unsure of her intentions.
Ava brushed Ferguson’s hand off her shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll be right back,” she countered, standing up and striding over to the brown-haired soldier, focusing in on his rank insignia and the sand-coloured name-strip fixed onto his combat jacket. “Sergeant Kozinski?” she asked, shouting over the noise.
He nodded.
She put her mouth up to his helmet, speaking slowly and clearly to be heard over the mounting noise. “The man is saying ‘Take me home’.”
Kozinski took a moment to process the information. He leant close to Ava’s ear to reply. “We are, ma’am. He’s going on a flight back to Fallujah. Mistaken identity. Negative intel value.”
Ava had seen enough.
She turned and shouted something in Arabic up to the gunman.
Immediately, a large soldier with a corporal’s stripes a dozen feet to her right swivelled his gun, training it directly onto her. Through the confused yelling, she could hear another voice now barking, “Do not communicate with the enemy.”
It took her a few moments to realize the order was coming from the large corporal pointing his carbine at her.
She looked back at his young face peering at her from behind the weapon. He was anything but calm. There were beads of sweat running down his mud-caked face, and the deep rings around his eyes suggested he had not slept in days.
She knew every second was critical. There was no time for lengthy explanations.
She turned away from the soldier threatening her and yelled something else in Arabic to the gunman, who was still repeating the same phrase over and over, more frantically now, his hand shaking as he ground the pistol into the back of his captive’s head.
The large corporal advanced on her, covering the distance between them in quick strides. He was pointing the assault rifle straight at her head, screeching now. “Do not communicate with the enemy!”
“Get him off me!” Ava bellowed across at Kozinski, motioning to the corporal. But Kozinski was not listening. He was glued to the scene unfolding on the truck, focusing through his Aimpoint sights, oblivious to what was going on around him.