The Nostradamus File (24 page)

"What's Lerner doing about Hezbollah?"

"Getting ready to unleash the IDF on them. Russia and China have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. The song and dance is starting."

"You're just full of good news today, Elizabeth."

"Actually there is some good news. Selena thinks she's located the Ark. Or at least a possibility of where it might be."

"Which is?"

"In England, in a church. They're going after it tonight."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Stephanie said.

CHAPTER SIXTY-
ONE

St. John's was the kind of
picturesque English church that found its way onto postcards. It was set in the countryside about a mile from the nearest village. Ronnie parked away from the building, by a graveyard filled with old, tilted monuments and markers. A bright moon cast shadows from the ancient stones.

The church was large, the stone walls gray and solid in the moonlight.
The main part of the church was a long rectangle with a peaked roof. A tall, square bell tower rose at the end. An arched vestibule jutted out halfway down the side, flanked by pairs of narrow stone windows with diamond panes. A row of similar windows marched the length of the church along the roof.

The rectory was a separate building
set off to the side. A path led to it from the church. The windows of the rectory were dark, the door shut tight against the night.

A pair of arched wooden doors led into the vestibule. The lock looked old, the kind of lock that opened with a heavy iron key. The doors were reinforced with iron straps and black iron hinges. Iron rings were mounted on each door. Ronnie grasped one and gently pulled. The door moved.

"It's not locked," he said.

Nick's ear was itching. "Something doesn't feel right."

"Nobody knows we're here," Selena said. Her voice was quiet. Her heart was pounding. She took a deep breath, another.

"Yeah. Lock and load," Nick said.

The guns came out. Nick nodded and Ronnie pulled the door open.

The vestibule was twelve feet deep and twice again as wide. A closed oak door led from the vestibule to the church. Nick eased it open and signaled the others to wait. He stepped into the church.

The interior was dim, quiet, lit by moonlight coming through the windows and a pair of fat candles burning on two high brass candleholders at the front. The roof was braced with a tented cross work of thick wooden rafters and beams, all of it supported by massive round columns of stone. From where he stood, the front of the church and the altar was to his left. A tall wooden pulpit reached by a narrow, spiral stair rose on the right of the altar, where the sermon would be read over the heads of the congregation. Behind it was the empty choir.

Marble plaques with the names of men fallen on one of England's many battlefields lined the walls. Rows of plain wooden pews took up both sides of a central aisle. A cross was set on the wall behind the altar.

There was something wrong. It took Nick a moment to realize that the altar was askew. It should have been placed at the end of the nave in the center, parallel to the congregation. But it was crooked, as if it had been moved. It was a solid rectangle of dark wood. There should have been things on it, a cross, candles, but it was bare. A white cloth lay crumpled on the floor beside it.

Nick's ear began to burn. There was a muffled cough from somewhere inside the church.

"Hit the deck!" he yelled.

Nick
dove for the floor. Gunfire erupted from behind the altar and the pulpit. The rounds blew sharp splinters out of the door behind him. Automatic weapons opened up from the other end of the building, shattering the pews in front of him. Nick wriggled backward into the vestibule. Shots came from outside the church, thudding into the heavy wooden doors and ricocheting from the stone.

They were pinned down.

CHAPTER SIXTY-
TWO

Elizabeth and Stephanie watched a live satellite feed of the war taking shape in the Middle East. The Israeli Defense Force was poised at the border with Lebanon, set for a full blown assault. Naval units
were positioned to bombard Sidon on the coast. Troop movements could be seen clearly on the satellite feed. Hezbollah was moving rocket batteries into position. Elizabeth knew they had Iranian missiles hidden somewhere in the hills.

On the West Bank, Israeli troops were already pouring through the checkpoints and pushing hard
for the camps. The Arab world was in an uproar. The UN Security Council was in emergency session. There were mass demonstrations in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

"I think Lerner will go all the way to Beirut," Elizabeth said. "He'll secure the south below Sidon first. That will eliminate the rocket bases. Then he'll try to force a settlement that drives Hezbollah out of the country. On the West Bank, he's going for the '67 cease fire line."

"The border with Jordan. What's Syria doing?"

"Making a lot of noise, mostly. They're still enmeshed in their civil war. There isn't much they can do."

She picked up her pen, set it down. "Rice has put the subs on DEFCON2 and held everyone else for the moment at DEFCON3. He doesn't want to send the wrong signals, but he's worried. Russia and China have raised their alert levels as well. If someone makes a mistake it could go out of control fast."

"What about that Iranian nuke?"

"That's the wild card. We don't know where it is, or what they're planning. We don't have a lot of assets in Iran. They've gotten first-class at counter-intelligence and they don't like spies."

The cat was outside, pawing at the garden door.

"Burps wants in," Stephanie said.

"Leave him out there. He's an outdoor cat, Nick said."

"Speaking of Nick, have you heard from them yet?"

"No. I don't expect to until after they've checked out that church. It should be anytime, now."

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Selena fired at movement in the churchyard and heard a cry. "Three out here," she yelled. She saw a man run toward a large mausoleum. She fired again, two rounds. The dark shape fell to the ground. "Make it two."

Nick crawled over to her. Ronnie was shooting into the interior of the church. The shots echoed in the stone space. Bullets fired from the graveyard ricocheted around the stone vestibule and sent fragments flying through the air. The shooters couldn't get a clear shot, but they were doing a good job of keeping everyone occupied.

"You cover me while I run for that big tombstone over there." Nick pointed at a large, weeping angel, gray in the cold light. "Ready?"

Selena inserted a fresh magazine, nodded. She began squeezing off rapid shots. Nick got to his feet and ran flat out for the angel. Bullets kicked up dirt around his feet and caromed from the memorial, whining away into the night. One struck the heel of his boot and sent him sprawling. He rolled behind the monument and squatted down. His foot was numb. The heel of the boot was gone. 

Lights were coming on in the rectory. Someone would be calling the cops. They didn't have much time. He darted a glance around the base of the angel, saw movement, fired. The figure collapsed. He saw no one else. There was a pause in the firing while Selena reloaded. Ronnie had stopped shooting. Was he hit? Nick put the thought aside.

He heard a vehicle start up. A dark van shot out from the other side of the church, past the main entrance and onto the road leading to town. Nick stood and fired after it until the slide locked back on his gun. It disappeared into the night. He reloaded and ran limping toward the church.

Selena got to her feet. Ronnie came out of the vestibule. "They kept me pinned down," he said. "They left and took the altar with them."

The rectory was ablaze with light. Nick thought he saw a curtain move at a window.

"Time to boogie," he said.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

"There wasn't anything else we could do," Nick said. "Whoever planned it knew we were coming. They set up an ambush and kept us busy while they grabbed the Ark."

"Are you sure it was the Ark?" Elizabeth asked.

Nick, Selena, Stephanie and Ronnie were gathered in Elizabeth's office. Burps slept on his back on a cat bed in the corner of the room. He snored. Elizabeth had bought the bed on a spur of the moment impulse. Now she was wondering why she had.

"I don't know, Director. But they took the whole altar with them. That makes me think the Ark was inside it."

"The altar was big enough," Selena said. "It was made from plain wood without decoration, like a big rectangular box. A Puritan would like an altar like that. It would never have occurred to anyone to see if there was something inside it."

"MI5 took over from the local bobbies," Elizabeth said, "to clean up after you. Automatic weapons aren't that usual in England. They were looking for terrorist connections."

"They find any?" Ronnie said.

"No. But all of the dead men were in the system. All former military. Two from SAS, one from our own Rangers. They found blood trails, so you probably winged a few more."

"Mercenaries," Nick said.

"MI5 identified one of them as having worked for a contractor security company called MKTA. It's run by a former SAS Colonel named McKenzie. MKTA has been implicated in a massacre at a refugee camp in Africa. They're suspect in other incidents as well."

"No proof it was them?"

"Nothing that would hold up in court."

"What's McKenzie's story? You don't make that kind of rank in SAS without serious skills. Why didn't he stay in?"

"He was forced to resign after he allowed the torture of Iraqi prisoners. He should have gone to prison."

"Someone
must have hired him," Ronnie said.

"That's where it gets interesting," Stephanie said. "I found this."

The monitor on the wall came to life with a picture taken at Logan Airport in Boston. An unsmiling, hard looking man with a short haircut and sunglasses was passing through customs.

"That's McKenzie. He showed up right after you came back from your visit to Pembroke Castle."

She pressed a key. The next shot was taken outside the terminal. McKenzie was getting into a private limousine. The rear plate was easy to read in the photo.

"That's not an airport limo. It belongs to Phillip Harrison, the main player in Cask and Swords."

"The group Adam told me about."

"Harrison has a place up in Maine on a private island, but McKenzie flew back to London that same evening. So he must have met with Harrison in Boston."

"It backs up what Adam told me. Explains why a sociopath like McKenzie is hanging out with a big banker," Nick said.

"They kind of go together
, don't they?" Ronnie said. "Sociopaths and big bankers?"

"Try to be serious, please." Harker picked up her pen. "Let's make some assumptions."

"Why would McKenzie's people be in that church?" Selena asked.

"'Same reason as us," Nick said. "They were after the Ark. That's assumption number one."

Stephanie said, "Maybe they were after you."

"Why wait until we went to the church? How did they even know we'd be there? It makes more sense the other way."

"You have a point."

"If they were after the Ark and Harrison met with McKenzie, assumption number two is pretty obvious."

"Harrison hired McKenzie to find the Ark," Ronnie said.

"Right."

"So what's the next assumption?"

"How did they find the Ark?"

"The same way we did?" Selena asked.

"The
y didn't have the sword, or know about Cromwell. There's an easier way. Let us do it for them."

"They were following you," Elizabeth said, "and that's how they knew where to look. If they found a way to bug your conversations, that would tell them where."

"Pretty sophisticated, but it makes sense. McKenzie would know about that kind of technology."

"What's our next assumption?" Ronnie asked.

"That the Ark was hidden in the altar and McKenzie will bring it to Harrison. He may already have done it." Elizabeth set her pen down.

"We might still have a chance to intercept before he delivers it."

"We don't know where he'd hand it over to Harrison."

"I don't think he'd fly it into Boston," Selena said. "Or any other place where customs might want to take a look. He needs privacy, someplace remote."

"McKenzie owns a sea going yacht called the
Bristol Angel
," Stephanie said, "and Harrison owns that island in Maine."