Stones of Fire

recently been downloaded. There are maps for Oxford, Oxfordshire, Godmersham, Swanley and…’ He stared at the list.

‘Come on, C?dmon. I can only hold my bated breath for so long.’

‘And Malta,’ he replied, turning the receiver in her direction.

‘Malta?’ Tapping her pursed lips, she stared at the screen. ‘Although world geography isn’t one of my strong suits, I seem to recall that Malta is a spit of an island located in the Mediterranean Sea. Do you think that’s where MacFarlane is headed?’

‘Given that the list of maps perfectly corresponds to MacFarlane’s known movements in the last seventy-two hours, we must assume that Malta is his destination.’ How ironic, given that the diminutive isle had once been home to the Knights of St John, the same order of warrior monks of which Galen of Godmersham had been an initiated member.

‘Isn’t Malta where St Paul was shipwrecked en route to Rome?’

‘Hmm? Er, yes,’ he answered, interrupted from his reveries. ‘As a crossroads between Africa and Europe, the island has been visited by many famous and infamous people.’

‘But why would MacFarlane take the Ark to Malta?’

C?dmon shrugged, at a loss. ‘The dreams of a madman are difficult to decipher.’

‘I’m guessing that getting the Ark out of England is going to be difficult, what with airport security being so tight.’

‘Which is why Stanford MacFarlane will no doubt use a boat. An innocuous trawler leaving port in the dead of night sounds about right.’ As he spoke, the mobile phone in his pocket began to beep.

‘What’s that?’

C?dmon shoved his hand into his anorak pocket and removed the mobile he’d taken from Sanchez. He glanced at the display.

‘Unless I’m greatly mistaken, we’ve just been given Stanford MacFarlane’s next move,’ he said, showing her the message: ‘105-13-95-39-17-35-90-63-123-51-20-98-34-27-43-110-87-71-41-9-54-2-120’.

‘Will ya look at that? It’s some sort of text message from Rosemont Security Consultants. Although I don’t know that I would call it a text message per se since it’s nothing more than a list of numbers.’

‘A coded list, I dare say.’ C?dmon suspected that Stanford MacFarlane maintained contact with his men using flash messages sent via mobile phones, a brilliant means of communication in the satellite age, enabling MacFarlane to issue simultaneous orders across the globe.

‘If only we had the encryption key,’ he murmured.

‘Do you think it has anything to do with the map of Malta on the GPS receiver?’

‘Mmmm… difficult to say.’ His gaze ricocheted between the receiver and the mobile. ‘Probably not — Harliss was the only one of MacFarlane’s men to carry a satellite receiver. I suspect that MacFarlane moves his chess pieces very carefully across the board, the master plan revealed in dribs and drabs.’

‘Where do we begin the hunt?’

‘In Malta. However, from this point forward, there is no more “we”.’

Edie’s brown eyes gleamed furiously. ‘So you’re planning to dump me and chase after MacFarlane on your own.’

‘I intend to retrieve the Ark, yes.’ Getting up from the bench, he walked over to a bin and dropped in his coffee cup.

He had no delusions as to the difficulty of the task he’d set himself. Tracking down MacFarlane and securing the Ark of the Covenant would more than likely prove an impossible, if not deadly, undertaking. But try he must. The GPS receiver had proved a godsend. Now at least he knew where to hunt for his nemesis.

Grabbing him by the wrist, Edie dragged him back down onto the bench. ‘I know you’re worried about me, but going after the Ark isn’t a one-man job. You’re going to need all the help you can get with MacFarlane and his Warriors of —’

‘I can’t take you with me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t have time to potty-train you.’

‘You arrogant bastard!’ She leapt to her feet. ‘I’m not some Bond girl along for the ride; I’m your partner. And in case you didn’t get the memo, I am a full and equal partner.’

C?dmon stared at her, unable to take his eyes off the long corkscrew curls that blew about her flushed face. Also unable to erase the memory of her standing beneath an upraised pickaxe.

‘“In the world you will have tribulation,”’ she continued. ‘John sixteen. A Bible verse that Stanford MacFarlane no doubt holds near and dear.’

‘A frightening prospect.’

‘Yes, it is frightening. Which is why I’m going with you to Malta. Unlike you, I completely understand MacFarlane and his beliefs. For five years I was fed a steady diet of Ezekiel and End Times prophecy.’

‘After today’s primer in apocalyptic beliefs, I should be able to manage.’

‘What you heard was just the tip of the iceberg. Think of me as your very own expert in Christian fundamentalism. Besides, we’re a team. We have been from the very beginning. So, short of knocking me unconscious, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

‘Very well,’ he murmured.

If she wondered at his easy acquiescence, she gave no indication. ‘Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, what’s the game plan?’

‘Simply put, to grab MacFarlane by the Old Testament and squeeze very, very hard.’

76

C?dmon took a deep breath, the sea air invigorating. Bracing his hands on the railing, he stared at the rolling blue Mediterranean waves that danced in the lemony light of early morning. It was the same sea that Odysseus had sailed on his way to battle the Trojans.

Standing beside him, cheeks tinted red from the breeze, Edie also inhaled deeply. ‘Other than a Potomac River dinner cruise, this is the first time I’ve ever been on a big boat. I think I like being on the open sea.’ A mischievous smile playing about her lips, she winked at him. ‘Could be because I was a lady pirate in a past life, what do you think?’

‘I think I’d rather be in a plane high above the sea,’ he grumbled. ‘Too many of these ferry boats have sunk in recent years. Not to mention that travelling by sea is a damn slow way to get from point A to point B.’ Point A being Naples and B their final destination, Malta.

‘Yeah, but in the dead of winter flights into Malta are few and far between. This will actually get us there six hours sooner than if we’d waited for the next available flight. Which you would know if you’d ever watched The Amazing Race. So stop griping.’

‘I have been doing a bit of that, haven’t I?’

‘Understandable. You’re under a lot of stress.’

Truly an understatement. Already, the old paranoia had set it. The niggling fear that an unseen enemy would lurch from the shadows. Danger and treachery but a heartbeat away. If allowed to run rampant, fear could quickly become a man’s worst enemy. More dangerous than an assailant with a gun.

Because of his intelligence training, he knew the drill — always pay with cash, never use your real name and never, ever, sleep in the same bed two nights in a row. Simple enough, but Edie’s Pre-Raphaelite beauty attracted attention wherever she went.

‘Short of knocking me unconscious, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

‘You’ve got two very big creases in the middle of your brow. Care to share your worries?’

‘I was thinking about the Ark and the poor blokes at Bethshemesh,’ he lied.

‘And you’re concerned that when we get the Ark from MacFarlane, it may gobble us whole.’