She knew the answer to only the last question.
Yes.
If the book were truly unearthed, it offered a singular opportunity—a chance to end the world and forge a new one in His name. Although she had been trained from a young age, she had never truly expected this day to arrive.
Preparations must be made.
She pressed the second number on her speed dial and pictured the large muscular man who would answer on the first ring.
Her second in command, Tarek.
“Your wish?” His deep voice still bore traces of a Tunisian accent, although he had not spoken with a countryman for a lifetime.
“Wake the others,” she ordered. “At long last, the hunt begins.”
5
October 26, 3:38 P.M., IST
Airborne above Israel
Erin longed to be on the ground, away from the heat and noise and dust, and from the priest. She was too hot herself, and the priest must have it worse in his long cassock and hood. She tried to remember when Catholic priests stopped wearing hoods. Before she was born. Between his hood and his sunglasses, she saw only his chin, square with a cleft in the middle.
A movie-star chin, but he made her uneasy. As far as she could tell, he had not moved in more than half an hour. The helicopter dropped a few feet, but her stomach stayed up in the air. She swallowed. She wished that she had thought to bring water. The soldiers didn’t seem to have any, but they didn’t seem to care. The priest didn’t either.
Monotonous arid landscape slipped by below. Since the helicopter left the hospital, it had been flying east and north, toward the Sea of Galilee. Every minute of flight changed their possible destination, but Erin had lost interest in trying to guess where she might land.
They closed in on a familiar flat-topped mountain that climbed steeply out of the desert. She made out the white finger of the ramp that the Romans had built to finally breach its walls.
Masada.
It hadn’t even been on her list of possible sites. Masada had been thoroughly excavated in the sixties. Nothing new had come out of the site in decades. Tourists had been tramping all over it.
Perhaps the earthquake had uncovered something nearby. A Roman camp? Or the remains of the nine hundred Jewish rebels? Only thirty or so bodies had ever been recovered. They had been reburied with full military honors in 1969.
She craned her neck to get a better view. Unbroken sand stretched in all directions. No sign of activity around the base, but she spotted a large helicopter on the summit. That must be where she was headed. She sat straighter, eager to discover what required her immediate attention.
The priest moved almost imperceptibly, a slight shift of his handsome chin. So he still lived. She had forgotten to take him into account while guessing their destination. Though primarily a Jewish landmark, Masada was also home to the ruins of a Byzantine church, circa AD 500. The earthquake might have exposed Christian relics. But, if the Israelis planned to turn the relics over to the priest, why bring her in the first place? Something didn’t add up.
The helicopter descended toward the summit, kicking sand through the open doorway. She squinted against the hot grit and cupped her hands around her eyes. She should have brought protective goggles. And water. And dinner. And a backup phone.
She wished Perlman hadn’t taken her cell phone. Surely her students had reported in by now to let her know Heinrich’s condition. Otherwise … well, she didn’t want to think about otherwise. He had been at the site as her grad student. Whatever happened to him was her responsibility.
Erin brought her pinkie finger and thumb to her ear to pantomime the word phone.
Perlman fished it out of his pocket. He yelled over the noise. “Keep it off.”
“Yes, sir.” At this decibel level, he wouldn’t hear the sarcasm.
He handed the phone to her, and she stuck it into her back pocket. The second he turned his back, she intended to turn it on and check her messages.
The summit came into view.
She leaned out, searching below, stunned. It took her a thundering moment to understand what she was seeing.
Masada was … gone.
The walls, the buildings, the cisterns were piles of rocks. The casemate wall that had surrounded the fortress for thousands of years had been completely destroyed. Rubble stood in place of the columbarium and synagogue. The mountain had practically been cleaved in two. She had never seen such devastation up close.
The pilot slowed the engines, and they whined out in a lowering pitch as the skids scraped the top of the mountain and the helicopter settled to a stop.
She strained to see through the cloud of dust surrounding them. Black rectangles had been lined up near the edge of the plateau. They were too regularly shaped to be natural. Two people dropped a new one next to the others.
Body bags. Full ones.
Masada was one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel. It had probably been teeming with tourists when the quake struck. How many more lives had the cursed mountain claimed? Her stomach lurched again, but this time not from the helicopter.
A cool hand fell on her shoulder, and she jumped. The priest. He, too, must have noted the dead. Maybe she had been wrong all along. Maybe he was here to perform Last Rites or look after the dead at the behest of the Church.
She felt sick at the thought of how excited she had been a few minutes before. This was no archaeological site. It was a disaster scene. She wished that she were back in Caesarea.
Lieutenant Perlman jumped out and barked orders in Hebrew. Men spilled from both sides of the chopper and headed toward the body bags. They must have been summoned to collect the bodies. No wonder the officer had been so tight-lipped about it. She didn’t envy him his task.
The priest sprang out of the helicopter, graceful as a desert cat. His long cassock swirled in the rotor wash. He pulled his hood closer to his face and turned his head from side to side as if searching.
She fumbled with sweat-slick hands to unclip her safety harness. The floor seemed to lurch when she stood. She steadied herself against the seat back and took a few deep breaths. The Israelis had had a reason to bring her here, and she’d best calm down and find out what it was.
The priest turned and offered her help, gloved palm upturned in an old-fashioned, almost courtly gesture. It was certainly nothing like the way Lieutenant Perlman had hauled her out of the trench before she started this journey.
Grateful for the support, she took his hand. He released it the instant her sneakers touched the limestone.
The wind blew back his hood, revealing a pale face with high cheekbones and thick dark hair. A handsome man, for a priest.
“Tot ago attero … ,” he murmured as he pulled his black hood back over his head, masking his face again. She translated his Latin words. So many lost.