His despair grew to a sharp point—then a figure swept past him in the icy water, felt as a flow across his skin, heading back the way he had come. Startled, he went for his sword, remembering too late that he had left it in a pile with his robes.
He reached for her, but he knew she was gone.
Turning in the direction from whence she had come, he kicked with renewed vigor. He pushed through the rising dread that he would swim forever in the darkness and never find what he sought.
He finally reached a large cavern, its walls sweeping wide to either side.
Though blind, he knew he had found the right place. The water here felt warmer, burning with a holiness that itched his skin. Swimming to the side, he lifted trembling hands and explored the wall.
Under his palms, he felt a design carved into the rock.
At last. . .
His fingertips crawled across the stone, seeking to understand the images etched there.
Images that might save them.
Images that might lead him to the sacred weapon.
Under his fingers, he felt the shape of a cross, found a figure crucified there—and rising above it, the same man, his face raised high, his arms outstretched toward heaven. Between the bodies, a line connected this rising soul to the nailed body below.
As he followed this path, his fingertips burned with fire, warning him the line was made of purest silver. From the cross, the fiery path flowed along the curved wall of the cavern to a neighboring carving. Here, he found a cluster of men with swords, come to arrest Christ. The Savior’s hand touched one of the men on the side of the head.
Bernard knew what this depicted.
The healing of Malchus.
It was the last miracle that Christ performed before his resurrection.
Swimming along the wall, Bernard traced the silver line through the many miracles that Jesus had performed during his lifetime: the multiplication of the fishes, the raising of the dead, the curing of the lepers. He drew each in his mind, as if he had seen them. He strove to contain his hope, his elation.
At last, he came to the depiction of the wedding at Cana, when Christ turned water into wine. It was the Savior’s first recorded miracle.
Still, the silver path headed outward again from Cana, burning through the darkness.
But to where? Would it reveal unknown miracles?
Bernard quested along it—only to discover a wide swath of crumbling rock under his fingers. Frantic, he swept his palms along the wall in larger and larger arcs. Shards of twisted silver embedded in the stone scored his skin with fire. The pain brought him to his senses, forcing him to face his greatest fear.
This portion of the carving had been destroyed.
He spread both hands across the wall, groping for more of the design. According to those ancient pieces of papyrus, this history of Christ’s miracles was supposed to reveal the hiding place of the most sacred weapon of all—one that could destroy even the most powerful damned soul with a touch.
He hung in the water, knowing the truth.
The secret had been destroyed.
And he knew by whom.
Her words echoed in his head.
Knowledge? Here you will find only disappointment.
Finding him unworthy, she must have come straight here and defaced the sacred picture before he could see it. His tears mingled with the cold water—not for what was lost, but from a harsher truth.
I have failed.
Every death this day has been in vain.
CHAPTER TWO
December 18, 11:12 A.M. EST
Arlington, Virginia
SERGEANT JORDAN STONE felt like a fraud as he marched in his dress blues. Today he would bury the last member of his former team—a young man named Corporal Sanderson. Like his other teammates, Sanderson’s body had never been found.
After a couple of months of searching through the tons of rubble that had once been the mountain of Masada, the military gave up. Sanderson’s empty coffin pressed hard against Jordan’s hip as he marched in step with the other pallbearers.
A December snowstorm blanketed the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, covering brown grass and gathering atop the branches of leafless trees. Snow mounded across the arched tops of marble grave markers, more markers than he could count. Each grave was numbered, most bore names, and all these soldiers had been laid to rest with honor and dignity.
One of them was his wife, Karen, killed in action over a year before. There hadn’t been enough of her to bury, just her dog tags. Her coffin was as empty as Sanderson’s. Some days Jordan couldn’t believe that she was gone, that he would never bring her flowers again and get a long slow kiss of thanks. Instead, the only flowers he would ever give her would go on her grave. He had placed red roses there before he headed to Sanderson’s funeral.
He pictured Sanderson’s freckled face. His young teammate had been eager to please, taken his job seriously, and done his best. In return, he got a lonely death on a mountaintop in Israel. Jordan tightened his grip on the cold casket handle, wishing that the mission had ended differently.
A few more steps past the bare trees and he and his companions carried the casket into a frigid chapel. He felt more at home within these simple white walls than he had in the lavish churches of Europe. Sanderson would have been more comfortable here, too.
Sanderson’s mother and sister waited for them inside. They wore nearly identical black dresses and thin formal shoes despite the snow and cold. Both had Sanderson’s fair complexion, with faces freckled brown even in winter. Their noses and eyes were red.
They missed him.
He wished they didn’t have to.
Beside them, his commanding officer, Captain Stanley, stood at attention. The captain had been at Jordan’s left hand for all the funerals, his lips compressed in a thin line as coffins went into the ground. Good soldiers, every one.
He was a by-the-book commander and had handled Jordan’s debriefing faultlessly. In turn, Jordan did his best to stick to the lie that the Vatican had prepared: the mountain had collapsed in an earthquake, and everyone died. He and Erin had been in a corner that hadn’t collapsed and were rescued three days later by a Vatican search party.
Simple enough.
It was untrue. And unfortunately, he was a bad liar, and his CO suspected that he hadn’t revealed everything that had happened in Masada or after his rescue.
Jordan had already been taken off active duty and assigned psychiatric counseling. Someone was watching him all the time, waiting to see if he would crack up. What he wanted most was to simply get back out in the field and do his job. As a member of the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility in Afghanistan, he’d worked and investigated military crime scenes. He was good at it, and he wanted to do it again.