Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

… he had activated the detonator…

… that only sounded in the last ten seconds before exploding…

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Driven by instinct, not reason, Fowler leaped into the blackness outside the chamber, beyond the Ark’s faint light.

At the foot of the platform, a nervous Andrea Otero was biting her nails. Then suddenly the ground shook. The scaffold swayed and groaned as the steel absorbed the impact of the blast but didn’t collapse. A cloud of smoke and dust billowed out of the opening to the tunnel, covering Andrea with a fine layer of grit. She ran several feet away from the scaffold and waited. For half an hour her eyes remained glued to the entrance to the smoking cave, although she realised the wait was futile.

Nobody came out.

95

ON THE ROAD TO AQABA

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Thursday, 20 July 2006. 9:34 p.m.

Andrea reached the H3 with the shot tyre where she’d left it, more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. She found the jack exactly where Fowler had said, and mentally recited a prayer for the dead priest.

He is certain to be in Heaven, if such a place exists. If you exist, God. If you’re up there, why don’t you send a couple of angels to give me a hand?

Nobody showed up, so Andrea had to do the work herself. When she had finished, she went to say goodbye to Doc, who was buried no more than ten feet away. The farewell lasted a while, and Andrea was aware that she had howled and cried out loud several times. She felt she was on the verge – in the middle – of a nervous breakdown after what had happened during the last few hours.

The moon was starting to rise, lighting up the dunes with its silvery blue light when Andrea finally got the strength to say goodbye to Chedva and climb into the H3. Feeling faint, she closed the door and turned on the air-conditioning. The cold air hitting her sweaty skin felt delicious, but she couldn’t let herself enjoy it for more than a few minutes. The fuel tank was only a quarter full, and she’d need everything she had to reach the road.

If I’d noticed that detail when we climbed into the vehicle this morning I would’ve realised the real purpose of the trip. Maybe Chedva would still be alive.

She shook her head. She had to concentrate on driving. With a little luck she’d reach the road and find a town with a petrol station before midnight. If not, she’d have to walk. The important thing was to find a computer with a connection to the Internet as soon as possible.

She had a story to tell.

96 EPILOGUE

The dark figure walked slowly on his journey back home. He had very little water, but it was enough for a man like him, who had been taught to survive under the worst conditions, and to help others survive.

He had managed to find the route through which the chosen of Yirm?yahu had entered the caves over two thousand years ago. This was the darkness into which he had flung himself just before the explosion. Some of the rocks that had covered it had been blown away with the blast. It took a ray of sunlight and several hours of backbreaking effort for him to emerge into the open again.

He slept during the day wherever he found shade. He breathed only with his nose, through an improvised scarf he had made from discarded clothing.

He walked at night, resting ten minutes every hour. His face was completely covered with dust, and now as he saw the outline of the road a few hours’ away, he grew increasingly conscious of the fact that his ‘death’ could finally provide the liberation he had been seeking all these years. He would no longer have to be a soldier of God.

His freedom would be one of two rewards he had received from this undertaking, even though he could never share either of them with anyone.

He reached into his pocket for the fragment of rock, no bigger than the palm of his hand. This was all that was left of the flat stone with which he had hit Russell in the dark. Across its surface were the profound but perfect symbols that had been etched by no human hand.

Two tears ran down his cheeks, leaving tracks in the dust that covered his face. His fingertips traced over the symbols on the stone and his lips turned them into words.

Loh Tirtzach.

Thou shall not kill.

In that instant, he asked for forgiveness.

And was forgiven.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the following people:

My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, for avoiding the bombs during the Civil War and for giving me a childhood so different from their own.

To Antonia Kerrigan, for being the best literary agent on the planet with the best team: Lola Gulias, Bernat Fiol and Victor Hurtado.

To you, the reader, for making God’s Spy, my first novel, a success in thirty-nine countries. I truly thank you.

In New York, to James Graham, my ‘brother’. To Rory Hightower, Alice Nakagawa and Michael Dillman.

In Barcelona, Enrique Murillo, editor of this book, both untiring and tiring since he has one unusual virtue: he always told me the truth.

In Santiago de Compostela, Manuel Soutino, who lent his considerable understanding of engineering to descriptions of the Moses Expedition.

In Roma, Giorgio Selano for his knowledge of the catacombs.

In Milan, Patrizia Spinato, word tamer.

In Jordan, Samir Mufti, Bahjat al-Rimaui and Abdul Suheiman, who know the desert like nobody else and who taught me the gahwa ritual.

In Vienna, nothing would have been possible without Kurt Fischer, who provided me with information on the real butcher of Spiegelgrund, who died on 15 December of a heart attack.