‘You’re trying to tell me this extra paragraph was in that fucking email?’ he asked.
She nodded, aware her eyes were watering. ‘They must have deleted it before they sent it out,’ she managed. ‘But not properly.’
He nodded. If possible, he looked even angrier. He marched straight into the control room, held the sheets up high. ‘Why the fuck did none of you pricks spot this?’ he yelled.
‘Spot what?’
They checked their own copies of the document as he explained, verified her story for themselves. For the first time, they looked at Galia with something approaching respect. It made her feel ten feet tall.
‘I want cameras in the air now,’ the editor said. ‘I want this fucking aircraft filmed all the way in.’
‘At this time of morning?’ asked Lev, his deputy, the only one who ever dared stand up to him. ‘Forget anything fixed wing. We’d never get it prepped and up in time. But maybe we could use the traffic chopper.’
‘What’s its ceiling?’
‘Three thousand metres, give or take. Enough to film their approach.’
‘Put them up now,’ he said. ‘I want to skull-fuck those Channel 2 bastards. You understand? It’s payback time.’ He turned to Galia. ‘You’re our new work experience girl, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And all the shit we give you, it hasn’t put you off?’
‘I want to work here, sir. More than anything.’
‘Then congratulations,’ he told her. ‘You’re hired.’
II
Croke was checking the latest bulletins from Jerusalem when he heard the commotion outside. He ignored it at first, assuming it would sort itself out. But then came the shrieks. He opened his door to see Walters staggering backwards out of the cargo hold, his whole upper body ablaze. He fell onto his back and lay there screaming, his face charred and flames flickering from his mouth as if from some vanquished dragon as he died. Croke whirled on Pete and Kieran, washing their arms and faces in the galley sink. ‘What the hell happened?’ he demanded.
‘Acid,’ said Pete succinctly, turning to show Croke his blotched and blistered face, the frightening red of his corneas.
The sight shocked Croke into silence. But not for long. ‘Get in there,’ he said. ‘Finish them.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ snarled Kieran. ‘They’ve got acid, solvent and a taser.’
‘We can cover up your exposed skin.’
‘We can cover up
‘That wasn’t a request,’ said Croke. ‘That was an order.’
‘Stuff it up your arse.’
‘Jesus!’ said Manfredo, arriving with Vig at that moment. ‘What happened?
‘They’re in there,’ said Croke, nodding at the door. ‘Go get them.’
‘No need,’ said Vig. ‘Easier just to lock them in, then depressurize. We’ll starve them of air in no time.’
Croke frowned. ‘We can do that from out here?’
Vig nodded. ‘Sure. It’s all controlled from the cockpit.’
‘What about breathing masks? Won’t they drop down?’
‘We stripped them out last year,’ said Vig. ‘It was too much grief having them deploy every time we depressurized. Anyone who wants air back there has to take it in themselves.’
‘And we have enough time before we land?’
Vig shrugged. ‘You don’t want to hurry something like this, not at thirty thousand. It risks all kinds of shit. But we can still make it nasty back there pretty damn quick. Ten minutes and they’ll be struggling. Fifteen and they’ll be unconscious. Twenty and they’ll be dead. Then we close the vents, pump some air back in, open the door and dump them during our approach. ’ He gave Walters a prod with his foot. ‘But we’ll need to start now.’
Croke nodded. ‘Then get busy,’ he said.
III
Compared to the main cabin, the cargo hold was all functionality. There were bench seats along either side, but they were folded up to make room for the Ark, the chests, assorted luggage and the pallets of supplies. Luke tried the chests first. The end panel of the largest had been removed, leaving its innards exposed; but there was nothing inside. He tried the two smaller ones next. The first contained vestments, including the robe Jay had held up earlier; the second contained some old bottles of liquid, some thin squares of wood and sheets of white linen along with dented and misshapen coils of some soft, grey metal, probably lead to judge from their weight.
A tarpaulin near the tail had been folded back over itself. The shape beneath was unmistakeable. Luke felt a mix of grief and anger as he pulled it back. He’d already braced himself to find Jay dead, but not for the blotching of his skin or the broken, torn fingernails, nor for the blue strapping around his throat. He couldn’t leave him with that grotesque garrotte, so he found a box-cutter by the pallets and cut it away before folding Jay back beneath his shroud. Then he rummaged fruitlessly through the suitcases and the overhead lockers, finding nothing but blankets and life-jackets.
‘Was that Jay?’ asked Rachel, when he rejoined her.
‘Yes.’
She touched his forearm. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
Some kind of plan or chart was unrolled beside the Ark, its corners pinned down by bottles. Luke crouched to study it. It proved to be a schematic with a photograph of a Newton text clipped to a corner. Luke freed the photograph and took it to better light. There were ghostly lines beneath Newton’s handwriting, very similar to those in the larger schematic. The implication was clear. The great man had drawn the schematic himself, then he’d erased it and reused the paper for a religious text. Jay must have spotted the faint traces in Jerusalem, enhanced them with modern photographic techniques, then recreated this larger, cleaner version. It showed the Ark from front and side and top, and not as a religious relic, but as some kind of machine. No wonder Jay and his uncle had got so excited. No wonder they’d resolved to double-check every known Newton paper, and find all the missing ones too. He looked at Rachel. ‘Nikola Tesla,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘What about him?’
‘Jay had a picture of him on his wall. And I studied him as an undergraduate. Your archetypal crackpot inventor. Bankrupted himself trying to invent an electrical super-weapon. He claimed that it would make whole armies drop dead in their tracks.’ He put his hand on the Ark. ‘The thing is, it’s possible he got the idea from this. There’s this bizarre paper he wrote, claiming that the Ark wasn’t a religious artefact at all, but rather an incredibly powerful capacitor.’
‘A what?’
‘A capacitor. It’s a device that can hold a huge electrical charge. Like a battery, except designed to discharge in a single great jolt, like thunderclouds in a storm. That’s what would have made it so lethal.’
‘The ancients didn’t have that kind of technology,’ said Rachel. ‘We’d have found evidence if they had.’
‘What else are your Baghdad batteries?’ asked Luke. ‘It’s the same basic principle, only taken up a few notches. Anyway, I’m not saying he was right. All I’m saying is that maybe Newton came to the same conclusion: that the Ark was some kind of super-weapon, just as the Bible describes. An
‘I don’t know.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘I guess to turn base metal into gold.’
‘Not quite,’ said Luke. ‘It was to turn base metal into gold
