then he found a life jacket for himself. His right arm was growing increasingly numb from some blow he couldn’t even remember having taken. But finally he had it on. Blood was streaming from a cut in Rachel’s scalp. He wiped it away just as she opened her eyes. She looked pale and groggy, but she raised an eyebrow even so, making it instantly clear that she recognized him, that she was going to be okay, and the relief was so intense that it wasn’t just the sting of salt water that made his eyes tear up.
She tried to say something, but it was beyond her for the moment. He put a finger to her lips. A slick of oil was spreading on the sea, calming it like the proverb, creating an iridescent haze all around them. Its vapour was somehow reassuring, like hospital disinfectant. The sun was rising on the horizon, a new day dawning. And Luke was suddenly suffused by an extraordinary and unexpected gladness to realize that now it would merely be another in the usual sequence. Not the End of Days. Not Armageddon. Just Tuesday.
‘Is it over?’ murmured Rachel.
‘It’s over,’ he said.
As if to underline his words, the noise of a boat’s engine reached them at that moment, rising and fading with the swell. They had to be closer to the coast than he’d realized. Its white fibreglass bow slapped water as it slowed for the debris field. He called out and waved to it and it picked its way carefully through the flotsam, looking in vain for other survivors, then cut its engine and let momentum bring it alongside.
Friendly hands reached down to take hold of him and Rachel and haul them aboard. And then there was the sound of jubilant, relieved laughter; his, Rachel’s or the crew of the boat, he simply couldn’t tell.
EPILOGUE
Luke felt intense pride as he watched Rachel negotiate. Or maybe it was just happiness at seeing her again. They’d hardly spent ten minutes together since the crash. Her concussion and near drowning had been severe enough for her Israeli doctors to insist on keeping her in hospital and under observation for an extra couple of days, so by default he’d been the one speaking to the police, the intelligence services and the media, first in Israel, then back here in England.
The Prime Minister sighed as he flipped through the settlement agreement once more. ‘These are difficult times,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s having to make sacrifices.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Rachel. ‘And this is yours.’
His cheeks pinked a little. He uncapped his pen, wrote his name with a flourish on each of the copies. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Thank you, Prime Minister.’ She took three sets, passed two to her lawyer, then held a brief whispered conversation with him.
Luke looked around. The walls of the conference room were hung with portraits of great men in dark suits. He’d had his fill of self-important people recently. All the manoeuvring. All the excuses. All the blame shifting. He looked out through the facing windows instead; a sunlit garden with magnolias and cherry trees in magnificent blossom. And he had a sudden wild hankering to be out of here, just him and Rachel and the open road.
His new mobile buzzed in his pocket. He’d turned the ringer off for this meeting, but the police had insisted he keep it on at all times in case of urgent questions. He checked it; it could wait. But developments were breaking all the time. Just this morning an Israeli dive team had found the front half of Croke’s jet on the sea floor, five bodies still trapped inside. But no sign yet of the Ark. Not that it mattered much any more. With the full story out, it had lost its power to do harm. It almost certainly wasn’t the real thing, after all, but a scientific curiosity barely three hundred years old. Yet the leaders of Israel and her neighbours had still been sufficiently sobered by their closeness to catastrophe to adopt a new spirit of cooperation, even an eagerness to talk.
Other investigations were on-going in England. The vaults beneath St Paul’s and the Museum of the History of Science were being thoroughly and carefully explored. And everyone wanted to know exactly how the National Counterterrorism Taskforce had been able to take over Crane Court and then tear up the cathedral floor with so little supervision. Questions had been raised in Parliament; an emergency session in the House of Commons had left the government in turmoil and the Prime Minister fighting for his political life. Hence his desperation for some of Luke and Rachel’s new stardust. Hence today’s announcement of substantial and immediate new funding for veterans’ care and homes, and the photo-op that would accompany it.
It wasn’t just in England that powerful people were fighting for their careers, even their lives. A Washington DC lobbyist had been arrested on suspicion of bankrolling Croke’s operation. An evangelist with ties to the White House had hanged himself in his garage. And the President had declared himself fit ahead of schedule, and had ordered the Vice President to clear her desk.
The Prime Minister capped and put away his fountain pen, rose to his feet. He looked decidedly chipper now that the unpleasant business was done, bouncing up and down on his toes. ‘Are they ready for us outside?’ he asked.
An aide took half a pace forwards. ‘Five minutes, Prime Minister.’
‘As well to make them wait,’ he confided to Rachel. ‘It lets the excitement build.’ He gave her an avuncular smile and added: ‘And you’ll probably want to let me field the questions. These media packs can be quite intimidating, if you’re not used to them.’
‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Because Luke and I clearly scare easily.’
His lips went tight. He raised an eyebrow at an aide.
Luke went to join her. ‘So what are your plans?’ he asked. ‘After this press nonsense, I mean?’
She held up her copy of the agreement. ‘I promised Bren we’d go celebrate,’ she said. ‘You want to join us?’
‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘But I can’t. Not this afternoon. I’ve another meeting with the police and then I’ve got a month’s worth of phone calls to return.’ The whole affair had rehabilitated him. His old university had offered him his job back, and he’d been invited to multiple interviews elsewhere. He needed to take advantage before his popularity faded. ‘But I’ll be heading down your way tomorrow. I promised Pelham I’d drop by.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve had about thirty messages to call him. He insists I go out with him. Says it’s the least I owe him after the way he sacrificed himself for us and had to endure being driven around Birmingham for a day.’
Luke’s mouth felt unaccountably dry. ‘And? What are you going to tell him?’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘I think I made it pretty clear where I stand on going out with anyone called Pelham, don’t you?’
‘Damned right,’ he grinned. Without really thinking, he touched her hand, felt a delicious tingle at the contact. These past few days, he could scarcely touch anything without a spark of static, as though the Ark had charged him to overflowing, and he was still shedding. ‘Speaking of which,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘The name Luke,’ he said. ‘You never said where you stood on going out with someone called Luke.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Well?’ he asked, his heart in his mouth. ‘Would you?’
And there it was at last, that smile from the photograph. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I rather think I would.’
