Read an excerpt of Ark of Blood

“Have them make an ark of acacia wood… Overlay it with pure gold… Then put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law, which I will give you.”

Exodus 25: 10–16

 

“God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them.”

1 Samuel 6:19

Septuagint version and Hebrew manuscripts report 50,070 killed.

 

Prologue

Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Cairo, Egypt.

Djinns seeped from the cracks of the primeval city as Anubis prowled the Egyptian night in search of the dying. The gods of the ancients had been buried deep, but in the darkness they clawed their way back to the surface, ready to drink the blood of sacrifice once more.

Youssef Diab concentrated on the last clue of his crossword puzzle, the only noise the hum and whirr of fans that failed to cool the stifling summer heat. He was the only guard on duty tonight. The security company had sent all the others to the businesses surrounding Tahrir Square after the recent political riots. The museum was silent and still, its only occupants the dead — just how Youssef liked it.

A sudden scream rang out, the noise tinny through the security screen.

Youssef jolted away from his crossword, his skin prickling at the haunting sound. It was sharp at first, then trailed off into a trembling moan.

He scanned the screens, switching views until he saw movement within the Amarna period galleries. He squinted at the screen. It looked like intruders were doing something to the giant statues, but he couldn’t see who or what had screamed so terribly.

He pressed the silent alarm, hoping that backup would come quickly. But he had to make an effort to stop them in the meantime, or he would pay with his job.

Youssef pulled his gun from its holster and headed downstairs.

On the ground floor, he rounded a corner into the Amarna galleries and inched forward with caution. He kept close to the cramped display cases, where the eyes of mummified corpses stared out from the detritus of a long-dead civilization.

An animal moan came from up ahead, a terrible sound of suffering. Youssef hurried on, weapon ready.

His shoes squeaked on the tiles and he froze mid-stride, heart pounding. The security company didn’t pay him well enough to risk his life so easily. He listened for a moment, but no one appeared, so Youssef crept on. He tiptoed to the doorway and peered between two display cases at the scene before him.

A man was tied, spreadeagled, between two massive sculptures, his arms outstretched to the ancient gods as they stared impassively down at his suffering. His shirt was ripped open and blood dripped down to pool at his feet from the ankh sign carved on his chest, the symbol of eternal life formed in the shape of a cross with a looped handle at its top.

The victim’s face was swollen and bloody, but Youssef realized with a start that he was one of the specialist curators, Dr Abasi Gamal.

A woman stood by the curator’s side, holding a ceremonial knife with a sharp blade. A tight black outfit emphasized her feminine curves, and a mask of the falcon god Horus covered her face. Two others stood with her in the guise of gods made flesh: Anubis, the jackal, and the baboon-headed Thoth.

The woman drew her blade over Abasi’s chest, leaving bloody trails in his flesh. “Where is the Ark? I know you’ve studied it for many years and you found something new recently. Where is it?”

Abasi looked up at her, his expression contorted with suffering, yet a curious fanaticism glinting in his eyes. “You’ll never find it. The Ark has protected itself for generations and it will remain safe from you now. I curse you—”

The woman slammed the blunt end of her knife into his solar plexus. “Enough.”

Abasi grunted and slumped in his bonds.

“I have your journals and I will find your research assistant. I don’t need you, but the gods need a sacrifice to bless my quest.”

Abasi looked up at his torturer, his eyes terrified, voice trembling. “No, you cannot. Please, I would be without rest for eternity.”

The woman beckoned Anubis and Thoth forward. The men under the masks unhooked Abasi and dragged him over to a sarcophagus, an oversized funerary box designed to hold mummified remains.

“The sarcophagus is appropriate,” the woman purred. “The word means flesh-eater, and that is what it shall be for you. You should be flattered that your body will be treated as the pharaohs were. Of course, they were dead before the process began.”

The curator struggled and called out in an ancient language, a plea to the gods to spare him as the men tied him down onto the lid of the sarcophagus. They stuffed a gag into his mouth as he writhed to get away. But the ropes held fast.

The woman turned and smashed a glass display case containing the tools of the mummification process, salvaged from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. She selected a chisel and a hammer, caressing the objects as if anticipating the pleasure ahead.

Youssef realized what she intended to do, but he was frozen with fear, unable to move. He could only watch as the woman took the implements and approached her victim.

She intoned ancient prayers in a voice as vast and empty as the desert. Her men responded in a repetitive chorus, calling upon gods long thought dead.

Abasi tried to squirm away, screaming into his gag, but Anubis held his head still in meaty hands as strong as a vise.

Delicately, as if trying not to mark him, the woman inserted the chisel up into one of the curator’s nostrils. With a light tap of the hammer, she banged its end.

Blood spurted out around the instrument.

Abasi grunted, and the woman tapped again, harder this time. The curator’s eyes rolled back in agony.

“You can stop this, Abasi.” The woman’s voice was eerily calm despite the bloody scene. “Tell me where the Ark is. Or I will perform the ritual and disembowel you before dragging your brain from your skull.”

Abasi moaned against his gag and thrashed his head in emphatic denial.

“So be it.” The woman leaned over the curator, as close as a lover, then pressed her ceremonial knife into his left side, watching as it pierced the skin. She sawed the blade back and forth, driving it deeper as she breathed heavily with excitement at the intimate violation. Abasi moaned in tortured agony, convulsing under the hands of the gods who pinned him down.

Youssef knew he should charge forward and save the man, or at least run and find help, but he was transfixed by the horror and terrified that he would be next.

The masked figures began chanting once more, ancient words that animated the primitive horror of this place as the woman sliced through the curator’s flesh. Blood gushed over her hands as she cut deeper, opening up his side to reveal his inner organs.

She reached into Abasi’s body and pulled out a loop of his intestines, the stink making one of the men gag. Blood and bodily fluids pumped in gouts onto the floor — but the curator still lived.

“Men have watched their intestines burned before they died. But for you, we will finish in the traditional way.”

She reached for a longer chisel.

She inserted it up Abasi’s nose and lifted the hammer.

This time, she leaned into the blow. Once. Twice.

On the second strike, the chisel emerged from the top of Abasi’s skull, dripping with brain matter and bloody skull fragments.

The curator shuddered and finally lay still.

The woman calmed her breathing as she stared down at the corpse. Her clothes were stained with blood, and his guts steamed on the floor.

She turned to the men. “Search his office for anything he worked on. Take it all.”

The two men left, and the woman stood alone with the mutilated corpse. She reached out a hand and trailed her fingertips through the blood on the man’s chest, tracing the symbol of eternal life.

She suddenly turned toward Youssef’s hiding place, as if she could hear the thudding of his heart. He shrank back against the wall and held his breath.

The woman took a step toward him.

Youssef panicked and ran, fleeing the horrific scene as her laughter followed him like a curse.

 

Chapter 1

John Radcliffe Hospital. Oxford, England.

Morgan Sierra eased herself out of the hospital bed and managed to stand without support. Pain throbbed through her body, but she tried to veil it with a steely resolve as the ward nurse assessed her.

“You’re clearly not well enough to leave. You need to rest.” The nurse held the discharge papers just out of reach.

Morgan smiled in what she hoped was more than just a grimace. “The doctor signed off on it, and I’m feeling much better. Really.”

She was determined to get out of the hospital today. ARKANE Director Marietti had secured her early release after they received news of the events at the museum in Cairo, and Morgan was keen to start on the investigation.

The nurse sighed and handed over the papers. “You might be stubborn, but you’re not superhuman. I’ll put some extra dressings in your bag with the painkillers. You need to take care of that wound.”

Morgan put one hand to the half-healed knife slash on her left side. Just another injury to add to the scars from her previous career in the Israeli military. The memory of that earlier pain — and her recovery — enabled her to endure now. Yet this throbbing seemed deeper than a flesh wound. A man transformed through a demonic curse in a crypt of human bones had inflicted it, and Morgan still felt tainted by his evil.

“Can I see Jake before I leave?”

The nurse smiled. “He’s still in an induced coma, but you can at least say goodbye.”

After spending way too much time getting dressed and flinching with every movement, Morgan walked slowly down the corridor to the intensive care unit.

The hushed white noise of machines and the low hum of voices permeated the hallway, the sound of news delivered to the sick and the dying. Some good, some bad. All evidence of human frailty. Her own frame was bruised and battered from the battle in the bone church of Sedlec, but she knew her limits. There was a margin of grace between physical collapse and a body sustained by the need for revenge. She had not quite reached the edge yet.

Morgan had learned in the military that the warrior fights not only when she feels like it, when the stars are aligned, and when her belly is full. The warrior fights because belief and passion stir the body to action. Physicality is a mere shell around what the will could achieve — and Morgan had every reason to head out on this mission right now.

She walked into the private room. ARKANE agent Jake Timber lay on his back, his eyes closed. Tubes twisted into his veins and down his throat, and monitors bleeped steadily by his side. His expression was at rest and the bruises on his face were only mustard shadows now, but under the sheets, Jake’s body was racked by crushing injuries from the bone church. This medically induced coma would give him time to heal.

Morgan sat down and took Jake’s hand. This broken body was not her partner, the man she had fought and killed beside. Her Jake lay in limbo, waiting for the eventual recombination of his mind and body.

Jake was her friend, perhaps more than that, and he was also responsible for bringing her into the Arcane Religious Knowledge And Numinous Experience (ARKANE) Institute from the dry world of academia, where she had studied the intersection of psychology and religion.

ARKANE had given her a glimpse into a world beyond the headlines, a shadow place, dealing with mysteries arising from religion, psychology, the supernatural, and the unexplained. Despite how battered her body was, and how the previous missions had torn apart her beliefs, Morgan now lived to solve those mysteries.

“There’s been an incident in Egypt,” Morgan said, hoping Jake could hear her. “Natasha El-Behery didn’t disappear after the bone crypt. She retreated to Egypt and committed a high-profile murder at Cairo’s Museum of Antiquities. I’m going after her and, by the time you wake up, she will no longer be unfinished business.”

Morgan squeezed his hand, then laid it back on the bed. She stood and walked to the door, glancing back at the last moment. “I’ll get her, Jake. Be well.”

She left the hospital and caught a taxi back to Jericho in the center of Oxford, where terraced houses on the edge of the canal backed against the stately homes of the old town. The imposing gates of the Oxford University Press loomed over the main road, its entrance flanked with towering Corinthian columns, the color of liquid honey in the morning sun.

The taxi pulled up in front of Morgan’s little two-up, two-down house. The tiny garden out front had overrun the path, and weeds encroached all the way to the faded blue door. It didn’t look like much, but this was her home now, far away from the memories of her past in Israel.

Morgan walked inside and closed the door behind her; sagging back against it now, she didn’t have to pretend she felt okay. Part of her wanted to crawl up the stairs into bed, pull the covers over herself, and hide from the world. Director Marietti could find someone else for this mission while she healed and recovered.

But then Morgan thought of Jake lying in the hospital bed and how Natasha had locked them both in with the demon in the bone church. The woman was a ruthless assassin, and Morgan was determined to bring her down.

She walked into the living room and put her bag down. Old books cluttered every corner, gathered from Oxford’s many antique shops, written by long-dead authors who had attempted immortality through their words. Gunfire had destroyed many of her books during the invasion by Thanatos in the hunt for the Pentecost stones, and Morgan was keen to build her library back up again.

On the mantelpiece stood a framed photo taken on a summer day on Brighton beach. Morgan knelt with her twin sister, Faye, and her little niece, Gemma, building a sand castle. The sun gave their hair a shining nimbus, and Faye’s blue eyes sparkled, the violet slash in her left vivid in the image. Morgan had the same slash in her right eye, the only thing that gave away the fact they were twins. Faye and Gemma were her blood, but some of the team at ARKANE were beginning to feel like family too.

A plaintive meow broke the silence, as Morgan’s sometime cat, Lakshmi, came in to greet her.

Morgan picked the cat up and pressed her face into Shmi’s soft fur. “I missed you too. Was Mrs Dawes good to you?”

Shmi’s rounded tummy was evidence that the kindly next-door neighbor was doing more than was necessary. Shmi squirmed and meowed to be let down. She would only ever allow a brief cuddle. The pair of them were well-suited, sharing a prickly independence.

Morgan looked at her watch. She had to be at the ARKANE office in the next hour, which gave her little time to clean herself up.

She hurried upstairs to her sparse, utilitarian bedroom and unbuttoned her shirt in front of the mirror. Morgan gingerly pulled the cloth away from her wound and examined herself in the reflection.

The demon’s talon had cut deep, narrowly missing her vital organs, and the wound was an angry red around the stitches. Bruising spread across her back and around to her flat stomach and, even on her Mediterranean-toned skin, the mottled browns and purple stood out. She touched the stitches gently, feeling the edges until she could sense something other than pain.

It would take a while to heal completely, but that was comforting in a way. When her body was back to its full strength — and by the time she had stopped Natasha — perhaps Jake would be ready to join her again.

Morgan taped some plastic over her wound and stepped carefully into the shower, washing away the hospital smell that lingered in her dark curls. While she would have preferred a long soak in the bath, this would have to do for now. Martin Klein waited to brief her on the next mission. She hurried to dress and get ready to leave.

But there was something she needed to do first.

Outside her bedroom on the narrow landing, Morgan used a hooked stick to tug open a tiny loft trapdoor. She pulled down the ladder and clambered up into the tight attic space, wincing at the pain in her side as she crawled along the main beam.

A loose roll of old carpet lay at the back, and Morgan reached inside the far end to pull out a small, battered suitcase. She kneeled before it and opened the case with care. It was a kind of external subconscious containing memories she wanted to keep hidden, but close.

Morgan ran her fingertips over two sets of dog tags from the Israel Defense Forces. One was her own set, removed at the end of her active duty service as a military psychologist. She had taken the other from her husband Elian’s bullet-ridden body after the fatal ambush that ended his life several years ago. Her father’s soft felt yarmulke and a tiny pair of shoes belonging to Gemma lay next to other precious objects collected over time.

Morgan pulled a long shard of bone from her pocket, a fragment of human femur. It had been removed from Jake’s body and felt like a talisman now, linking Morgan to him even while he floated in unconsciousness. Jake had confronted evil that night in the crypt of bone, but he’d paid a great physical price for his courage.

Natasha El-Behery was still out there, leaving destruction in her wake. As Morgan knelt in the attic, she whispered a silent promise. This time, it would be an eye for an eye.

Chapter 2

George Washington Masonic National Memorial. Washington, DC, USA.

Lucía Estes loved the early mornings when the streets were empty enough to walk freely, before clumsy tourists with oversized maps thronged the city. Many came to visit this memorial, and she was grateful to God for America, for the new life she had here — and for her job. Lucía was part of the cleaning team at the memorial. It might be menial work, but it made her feel connected to the history of this land, where immigrants just like her came to build new lives.

It wasn’t the most high-profile monument in Washington, but tourists still visited every day, and Lucía liked to think her efforts improved their experience. Those who traveled out to the suburb of Alexandria were certainly devoted to learning more about one of their Founding Fathers. Lucía had known little about the Freemasons before she started the job, but she slowly read a little more of the information panels each day as she worked. She discovered the Masons were a God-fearing, community-minded brotherhood who acquired a poor reputation through scandalous rumor. George Washington himself had been a lifelong Freemason, as were many eminent men of his time.

At his inauguration, Washington took the oath of office on a Masonic Bible. He sat for his official portrait in Masonic regalia and was eventually buried with full Masonic honors. In 1793, as Acting Grand Master, he laid the cornerstone for the capital city of the United States, which was designed according to Masonic principles. Four US presidents had since sworn their incoming oath on George Washington’s inaugural Bible, and Freemasons still held positions of power in the US government.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, Lucía walked up the undulating path that traversed the grassy terraces leading up to the memorial. She passed a plaque with square and compasses and the letter G standing for geometry, representing the Architect, the great Creator. She sent up a quick prayer as she scurried past. My work for you, Lord.

As the sun rose, a ray of light touched the three-story tower with its classical facade supported by six Doric pillars, a fitting design for the austere monument. The first of the three sections represented strength, then Ionic columns in the middle section represented wisdom, with Corinthian columns at the top for beauty. A pyramid with a flame capped the tower, inspired by the lighthouse at Pharos in ancient Egypt. It had guided ships through the Mediterranean Sea into the port at Alexandria, and now the memorial illuminated the truth of the Masonic tenets.

Lucía entered through the back entrance, opening the heavy door with her key. She was first as usual, but the other cleaners and guards would arrive soon. She liked to start early, preferring hard work to small talk, and she followed the same routine every morning. Sometimes she finished without even realizing the time had passed as her ritual was so automatic.

In the years she had worked at the memorial, the place had wound deeply into Lucía’s core. She knew the temperature changes of the seasons intimately, and how the wooden artifacts needed extra care in damp weather. She knew the characteristic smell of the halls — and today, she sensed something was wrong.

There was a hint of a dark atmosphere, resonant of fear and death. It hung in the air, a malevolent presence. Lucía shivered. She couldn’t start her cleaning routine while she felt this way. She left the worker’s area and went to investigate.

She checked the North Lodge and South Lodge rooms as well as the exhibit display areas, but they were empty and smelled fresh. The Replica Lodge with Washington’s own Masonic apron and trowel were clear, too.

Lucía walked into the main Memorial Hall, the polished floor squeaking under her shoes. Green granite columns supported the high ceiling and, at the end of the hall, the gigantic bronze statue of Washington stood in Masonic regalia gazing down at her. There was nothing wrong there either, so she mounted the stairs to the second floor.

The smell grew stronger as Lucía approached the Royal Arch Chapter Room. It contained a golden replica of the Ark of the Covenant and a precious menorah, as well as murals depicting the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple. Lucía often saved it until last and cleaned it with special reverence. She loved its almost holy atmosphere — but now she was afraid of what might lie within.

Gathering her strength, Lucía walked through the marble archway into the room. She froze in horror, her hand flying to cover her mouth as the overpowering stench of death filled the air.

The head of a young man was wedged between the two golden cherubim on top of the replica Ark, dark curls matted to his head, his eyes bulging open in an expression of agony. Blood dripped down the gold chest onto the floor, where his decapitated body lay spreadeagled in a pool of gore and feces.

Words written in blood were scrawled over the mural of the destroyed Jerusalem temple: Shoah for the Arabs. No to peace.

Lucía reached out to clutch the nearest pillar as her stomach heaved. As she pushed down the nausea, she prayed aloud, begging God for His strength to face such evil.

 

* * *

Jerusalem, Israel

Inspector General Lior Avidan paced up and down the plush boardroom in the opulent King David Hotel, his mind racing with the problems that lay ahead. The terrorist bombing in 1946 had made this location a symbolic setting for peace summits and the signing of accords. It was a physical embodiment of survival, and it also had one of the world’s most sophisticated security systems.

Despite the elaborate protection, it was only six days until the president of the United States would, if the summit went well, sit down at this table to sign a new Peace Accord, and Lior felt an unease that went beyond his usual concerns at such a historic event.

His team had been through the security setup multiple times, but Lior was uneasy. He had been in the job long enough to know how it felt when everything had been considered, when everything had been planned, when he and his team had done their jobs correctly.

Today didn’t feel like that.

First, the phone call from Washington. A murder at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial with the head of an Arab man laid upon a replica Ark of the Covenant. The murder was being kept out of the press for now, but it wouldn’t be long before the story leaked out. The Freemasons were a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists and they would have a field day with the Peace Summit so close.

The words painted at the murder scene echoed in Lior’s mind. The Shoah was the term Jews used for the Holocaust, the genocide of six million by the Nazis. It was the reason his nation would defend Israel to the death in modern times. They would not be annihilated in a homeland won by the blood and ashes of their ancestors. Sometimes Lior wasn’t proud of the way his nation acted, but to use the word shoah against another race was unthinkable.

Could extremist Jews have carried out the murder in Washington? Was it a warning or some kind of threat?

Such a brutal murder was out of character for the usual groups who protested against peace, right-wing hawks on either side of the Green Line that separated Israelis and Palestinians. The murder alone would have been bad enough, but now a threat had been posted on a website and linked all over social media. It gathered more views and shares with every minute that ticked by.

Lior sat down at the boardroom table and opened his laptop to examine the page once more. It depicted the Ark of the Covenant, as it was in ancient times, hoisted high on golden poles perched on the shoulders of priests and marched around the walls of Jericho. The black-and-white drawing was so detailed that you could almost hear the blast of the shofar, the ram’s horn. According to the book of Joshua, the walls were destroyed by the power of the Ark.

The image was certainly Jewish, but Arabic text lay beneath with a quote from the Koran, Surah al-Baqarah 2:248. “A Sign of his authority is that there shall come to you the Ark of the Covenant… and the relics left by the family of Moses and the family of Aaron, carried by angels. In this is a symbol for you if you indeed have faith.”

Underneath in Hebrew were words from the Jewish scriptures, 1 Samuel 4:5. “When the ark of the Lord’s covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook.”

A countdown ticked away in the corner of the screen. A countdown to the last day of the Peace Summit, the exact time the president of the United States was due to sign the Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The date of the trip was widely known, but the exact timetable for the signing was privileged information.

The potential for conflict lay on a knife-edge in this ancient city. Jerusalem had been soaked in blood for millennia and that would never change, but Lior was determined that a catastrophe would not happen on his watch.

The Ark was the one thing that might galvanize support for extremists on both sides in this city of contradictions. If the Ark fell into the hands of Muslims, it would become a bargaining chip of astronomic proportions — or ignite a war to possess it. If right-wing Jews got hold of it, they would storm the Temple Mount and pull down the Muslim holy places to build the Jewish Temple once more. And if Muslim nations united against Israel, it could spark a world war.

Whichever way Lior looked at it, the Ark of the Covenant could bring only violence. But then, no one knew where it was and a quest to find it was more Hollywood than twenty-first-century Jerusalem. But this was a land where ancient relics could still change history. It would be best for everyone if the Ark remained a legend.

Lior had worked closely with intelligence services in other countries, but there was no clear indication of who was behind the website or the murder at the memorial. Plenty of far-right religious extremists claimed to usher in the last days with various acts, but no group had claimed responsibility this time.

Even the best hackers couldn’t trace who had posted the image and the countdown. It was pinged around international servers, through companies and government sites and private addresses, but remained untraceable and unremovable, despite many attempts to bring it down.

Lior sighed with exhaustion and ran his hands through his thick black hair, now shot through with more silver than ever. It had taken years to reach this point, and the peace negotiations were fragile as ever. The last time they had been this close was in 1993, when Yasser Arafat shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn. The two men had shared the Nobel Peace Prize, and the world expected the event to usher in a new era of peace. Both sides of the struggle had breathed a sigh of relief — but it was short-lived.

In 1995, an extremist Jew assassinated Rabin, and Arafat ended his days almost a decade later under siege in Ramallah. His body was later exhumed over fears of polonium poisoning, further heightening tensions between the two sides. The second intifada brought years of violence, and it seemed like peace was further away than ever.

Too many young people on both sides, Lior’s own children included, had grown up with conflict. Disruption and violence at this stage would set the delicate process back for another generation. Lior would not let that happen. He was committed to peace, as were many other moderate Israelis and Palestinians. Hope must prevail.

He pushed his chair back and walked over to the bay window with a view toward the walls of the Old City. Verses from the Talmud echoed in his mind. “God gave ten measures of beauty to the world: nine measures he gave to Jerusalem and one only for all the rest of creation.”

But as storm clouds gathered over the city, Lior sighed. It was also true that “God gave ten measures of suffering to the world and nine of them fall on Jerusalem.”

He sat back down and thumbed through a thick file, the material too sensitive to be kept digitally in a world of increasing cybercrime. There had been no mention of the Ark of the Covenant from extremist Muslim groups before. It had always been American Christians who searched for the Ark in Jerusalem. One extremist insisted it was under Golgotha, where the blood of Christ dripped down onto the mercy seat at the crucifixion. But as ever, such investigations turned up nothing of importance.

Lior scanned the data on right-wing Jewish groups determined to take back Temple Mount, but they focused on protests. A considered countdown wasn’t their style.

The website implied that an ancient artifact lost for thousands of years would suddenly appear in Jerusalem in six days. But the whereabouts of the Ark had been hidden for thousands of years. How likely was it that this group could produce it in such a short time?

Yet Lior felt a deep unease. The Ark was a weapon as well as a symbol of triumph. He had to do something, but could not risk embroiling himself in rumor and religious speculation. ARKANE owed him a favor since he had helped clear up the mess at the Ezra Institute. Perhaps they could help solve the mystery.

 

Chapter 3

Oxford, England

Morgan walked through the muted light of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, limping slightly as she favored her uninjured side.

The neo-Gothic arched ceiling let in the sun through panes of glass, but even though it was summer, the light was dim. Children gathered around the skeletons of dinosaurs, caressing the bones of the long dead with inquisitive fingers, as chattering voices filled the hall. Statues carved from Normandy limestone encircled this cathedral to science, each supporting a pillar that stretched high into the vault above. Hippocrates, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin, along with luminaries from down the centuries, stood as fitting guardians for this cavernous hall of knowledge.

Morgan walked on into the darkened atmosphere of the Pitt Rivers, a separate area of the museum. Electric lights degraded the exhibits, so torches were provided to allow patrons to see into dense cabinets. Flickering beams from occasional explorers shone between the high glass cases, giving the room a sense of intimate secrets hidden in shaded corners.

This part of the museum contained treasures of evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, brought back from distant lands in the nineteenth century, when questions about provenance were rarely considered. Morgan entered the maze of cases as, behind her, a group of children squealed as they discovered animal skull masks in the magic and witchcraft display. She smiled, grateful that a fascination with the macabre wasn’t hers alone.

At the back of the museum, she pushed open a nondescript door leading into what looked like an unused store-cupboard to the casual observer. Lights flashed and scanned her body before the false back of the cupboard slid open.

Morgan stood at the top of a staircase and looked down at the ARKANE offices beneath the Pitt Rivers museum. Five levels surrounded a central light well with tantalizing glimpses of labs below, where investigative teams worked on ancient and occult objects.

Martin Klein poked his head out into the light well and waved up at her. He was ARKANE’s designated librarian, a brilliant archivist, although his work defied a simple job title. He took the secret knowledge of the world and mapped it into databases, creating algorithms to find patterns in the chaos and understanding in the void.

Morgan limped down the stairs to meet him on the second floor.

As she walked into the lab, Martin beamed in welcome, his blond hair spiked in a curious fashion where he’d clearly been pulling at it.

He pushed his wire-rim glasses back into position. “Come and look, Morgan. This amulet has a totally different inscription from what we normally see in the polytheism of ancient Egypt. Pharoah Akhenaten is the key to this, I’m sure of it.”

Morgan held her palms out in a gesture of surrender. “Slow down, Martin. I have some catching up to do.”

“Of course, of course.” Martin bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet. “How’s Jake?”

“He’s still in intensive care, but he’s strong. He’ll be okay, I’m sure of it.”

Morgan knew how hard it was for Martin to share his true feelings, but he cared deeply for Jake. With Jake’s absence, Martin was playing a more active role in the investigation, stepping outside his usual comfort zone of research. They would both work tirelessly to find Natasha.

She smiled. “Right, show me this amulet, then.”

Martin walked over to a lab bench, and Morgan joined him on the opposite side. A scarab beetle of turquoise stone, the size of a man’s palm, lay on glass over a mirror so the hieroglyphics were visible underneath.

“Scarab amulets are common in funerary wrappings,” Martin explained. “But this one is different. It’s from the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, when he gave up other gods and converted Egypt to monotheism. He worshipped the Aten, portrayed as a great sun disk, but it was a deeply unpopular change with the common people. He even had to move his court to the city of Amarna, where this was discovered.”

Morgan frowned. “How is this connected to the murder in the museum?”

The wound in her side throbbed with dull pain, but she also felt the buzz of curiosity, her mind sharpening as she considered the problem. This was why she loved working for ARKANE investigating mysteries that wound between the past and the present, and discovering long-hidden ancient secrets.

Martin turned to his laptop and pulled up security footage from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

“The perpetrators wore headdresses of ancient Egyptian gods. They are extremely well-made cult masks, and I suspect they are used for other religious rituals, not just for this murder.”

An agonized scream rang out from the computer speaker. Martin looked away, but Morgan forced herself to watch the violence unfold.

The falcon-headed god Horus was clearly Natasha El-Behery. Morgan had seen the assassin kill before, and there was no hesitation as Natasha thrust the knife into the man’s side.

Morgan watched the final moments of the ritual killing, bile rising in her throat as the chisel burst out from the top of the curator’s skull. The mask obscured Natasha’s face, but Morgan knew the assassin’s eyes would be hard, without a trace of empathy.

She watched the scene to its end. Morgan would not look away from the murder, nor would she turn away from the task ahead.

“Who was the victim?”

Martin checked his notes. “Dr Abasi Gamal. He is — was — the curator of the Amarna period section of the museum. He’s written several books and a multitude of scholarly articles about how monotheism spread in ancient Egypt, hence the link with Akhenaten.”

Martin tapped on his laptop. “The Egyptian police have blamed the murder on fundamentalist unrest currently sweeping the country. They don’t much care about the murder of an obscure academic. So, it’s up to us to follow Natasha.”

He brought up an image of Natasha El-Behery’s striking face. She could pass as a supermodel, but her eyes betrayed the cruelty and dominance of an apex predator.

“The El-Beherys are Egyptian aristocracy. Her grandfather provided men for Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb, and he lined his pockets with the sale of antiquities to the West. He later became a great benefactor, arranging theft for hire on specific artifacts he later donated to Egyptian museums. There’s evidence to suggest he was part of the consortium that broke up assets from the Baghdad museum after the invasion, and he arranged theft for hire on specific antiquities. After his death five years ago, Natasha moved to Europe. She emerged as a key part of Milan Noble’s Thanatos organization and you know how that ended.”

The screen changed to a picture of Natasha arm-in-arm with global health tycoon Milan Noble against a backdrop of the Vienna State Opera House. They made a gorgeous couple, but Morgan couldn’t shake the image of the twisted demonic figure that Milan had become in the last hours of his cursed life.

“Natasha is a gun-for-hire,” Martin continued. “A freelance assassin with ties to the terrorist underworld and expertise in antiquities smuggling. She is much in demand.”

Morgan nodded. “She’s certainly good at her job, and she’s already ahead of us. I need to know where she’s going next. What did they take from the museum?”

Martin checked his notes. “Everything from the curator’s study, including journals and some copies of his books on Akhenaten, the origin of the Moses story, and the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.”

He tapped on his laptop again. “But the murder in Cairo is just one piece of the puzzle. Your friend Lior in Israel forwarded these to us just an hour ago.”

The screen showed the severed head and bloody words from Washington, the website countdown, and the image of the Ark.

Morgan felt a brief pang of loss at Lior’s name. They had been good friends when Elian was alive, but after she left her life in Israel behind, she lost touch with many of her old friends. A brief meeting after the explosion at the Ezra Institute in Jerusalem rekindled their friendship, but they had a long way to go to rebuild trust. Perhaps this mission might help.

Morgan leaned in to examine the images more closely. Scripture told of the Ark marched around the walls of Jericho. After they fell in the face of the Ark’s power, the inhabitants of the city were massacred. Every living thing inside slaughtered in the name of God. A powerful religious symbol that might also be a terrible weapon.

This was no longer a simple mission to avenge Jake’s injury. Israel was her country and its desert sand ran in Morgan’s blood.

“Natasha asked the curator where the Ark was before she killed him. She must be involved in this.” She looked at Martin. “I need to go to Cairo.”