voice breaking. It was as if, in delivering his message, he had emptied himself. His eyes were on the corpse.
‘And that is…?’
‘Gold, Ms Otero. Stowe Erling had found the Ark of the Covenant.’
37
The Bible says: ‘And they shall make an Ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and thou shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the Ark, that the Ark may be borne with them.’
I’ll apply the measurements of the regular cubit. I know I’ll be criticised because few scholars do; they rely on the Egyptian cubit and the ‘sacred’ cubit, which are much more glamorous. But I’m right.
This is what we know for sure about the Ark:
• Year of construction: 1453 BC at the foot of Mount Sinai.
• 44 inches long
• 25 inches wide
• 25 inches high
• 84-gallon capacity
• 600 pounds in weight
There are people who would suggest that the weight of the Ark was greater, around 1,100 pounds. Additionally, there is an idiot who dared to insist that the Ark weighed more than a ton. That is crazy. And they call themselves experts. They love to add the weight of the Ark itself. Poor idiots. They don’t realise that gold, even though it is heavy, is too soft. The rings could not have supported such weight, nor would the wooden poles have been long enough for more than four men to carry it comfortably.
Gold is a very soft metal. Last year I saw a whole room covered in thin sheets of gold made from one good-sized coin, following methods dating back to the Bronze Age. The Jews were skilled crafts-men, and did not have great amounts of gold in the desert, nor would they have burdened themselves with such a great weight that they left themselves vulnerable to their enemies. No, they would have used a small amount of gold and created thin sheets of it to cover the wood. Shittim wood, or acacia, is a solid wood that could last centuries without being damaged, especially if it was covered by a thin layer of metal that did not rust and was indifferent to the effects of time. It was an object built for eternity. How could it be otherwise, since it was the Timeless One who gave the instructions?
38
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
‘So the data had been manipulated.’
‘Somebody else had the information, Father.’
‘That’s why they killed him.’
‘I understand the what, where and when. If you’ll just give me the how and the who, I’ll be the happiest woman in the world.’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Do you think it was an outsider? Maybe the man I saw at the top of the canyon?’
‘I don’t think you’re that foolish, young lady.’
‘I still feel guilty.’
‘Well, you should stop. I was the one who asked you not to tell anyone. But believe me: someone in this expedition is a murderer. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we talk to Albert.’
‘OK. But I think you know more than you’re telling me – much more. Yesterday there was an unusual amount of activity in the canyon for that time of night. The doctor wasn’t in her bed.’
‘I told you… I’m working on it.’
‘Shit, Father. You’re the only person I know who speaks so many languages but doesn’t like to talk.’
Father Fowler and Andrea Otero were sitting in the shade of the west wall of the canyon. Since nobody had slept much the night before, after the shock of Stowe Erling’s murder, the day had begun slowly and heavily. However, little by little, the knowledge that Stowe’s magnetometer had discovered gold began to eclipse the tragedy, altering the mood in the camp. There was a whirlwind of activity around quadrant 22K, with Professor Forrester at its centre: analysis of the composition of the rocks, further tests with a magnetometer and, above all, measurements of the solidity of the ground for digging.
The procedure consisted of running an electric wire through the ground to find out how much current it would handle. A hole filled with earth, for example, has less electrical resistance than the undisturbed ground around it.
The results of the test were conclusive: the ground at this point was very unstable. This infuriated Forrester. Andrea watched as he gesticulated wildly, throwing papers into the air and insulting his workers.
‘Why is the professor so angry?’ asked Fowler.
The priest was sitting on a flat rock about a foot and a half above Andrea. He had been playing with a small screwdriver and some cables that he had taken from Brian Hanley’s toolbox, paying little heed to what was going on around him.
‘They’ve been running tests. They can’t simply dig up the Ark,’ Andrea replied. She had spoken with David Pappas a few minutes before. ‘They believe that it’s in a manmade hole. If they use the mini-excavator there’s a good chance the hole will collapse.’
‘They may have to go around it. That could take weeks.’
Andrea took another series of shots with her digital camera and then looked at them on the monitor. She had some excellent pictures of Forrester literally foaming at the mouth. A frightened Kyra Larsen throwing her head back in shock after the news of Erling’s death.
‘Forrester is screaming at them again. I don’t know how his assistants put up with it.’
‘Maybe that’s what they all need this morning, don’t you think?’
Andrea was about to tell Fowler to stop talking nonsense when she realised that she had always been a fervent believer in using self-punishment as a way of escaping grief.
