THE LAST ARK

CHAPTER 6: MAR JARIS

St. George Monastery, West Bank Five Days Before Temple Ceremony

“WITNESS, can you read me?” Derek asks in a low voice, wondering if the satellite signal still works in the deep canyon. A blistering sun beats down on his neck as he walks the steep pilgrim path southeast of Jericho. Th e Wadi al Qilt canyon looks like a dry river basin sprinkled with date palms and shrub trees. Far too hot to wear a mask, he doesn’t expect cameras or assassins in such a remote location. Dressed in blue jeans, dark WITNESS glasses hide his sensitive hazel eyes. With a backpack and a large-brimmed hat for shade, he easily blends in with the other tourists. “Iran and China signed a new $300 million military weapons deal. China has agreed to purchase sanctioned Russian oil and wheat. CISA has detected four new soft ware update hacks. Admiral Adam Scott was laid to rest at Arlington Cemetary. Death of Cardinal Maroni deemed a murder.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Derek reacts. “WITNESS, stop.” Pilgrims turn to glower at him for breaking the silent procession. He steps to the side so he can whisper. “What happened to Adam Scott?” A long pause raises the concern of a lost signal. “Admiral Scott died of a cardiac arrest.” Adam Scott was in great shape—lean, fit, and a devoted jogger, although he ate red meat like a T-Rex. Still, the news comes as a powerful shock. Adam was a close friend. Even worse, his loss will devastate Jenn. An entirely new black hole of guilt rips through his soul, adding to the loss of SLVIA, and the deaths of Olavo and the cardinal. Derek promised Adam to look after Jenn, and he just broke that promise. “The new Saudi king—” WITNESS begins until Derek taps off the random feed to process the terrible news. Jenn’s last few texts sounded distant and angry, like she wanted space. He can’t blame her. She certainly deserves more than he can offer. Not that they ever had a relationship—unless you call an investigation a relationship. Still, he thought they had connected. That wasn’t enough. Derek’s obsession with finding a lost digital friend is not exactly a sexy trait. After nine month’s searching for the SLVIA code all he’s found is a string of religious conspiracy fanatics. Each one was a fan of Sister Sylvia, yet none knew they were dealing with an experimental espionage program. T he last time he saw the SLVIA, the AI had hacked into a malfunctioning DARPA drone swarm before it could reach Jerusalem. After driving the swarm into the Dead Sea, the SLVIA disappeared. Other than the proximity to where the AI may have perished, Derek sees no other reason he should be here. Jester may be right; he’s losing his grip. If he had his head on straight, he would return to the castle to help optimize WITNESS to fight the Kremlin’s cyber retaliation in the wake of sanctions. Located southeast of Jericho, the walls of the gorge rise three hundred feet to the Judean Desert plateau outside of the West Bank. An abbot named Sabas established the monastery in the fifth century. Invaded several times, he wonders why anyone would feel compelled to kill a bunch of monks. Positioned between two sheer cliffs, the place looks easy to conquer. Up ahead, the monastery of Saint George of Choziba, called Mar Jaris in Arabic, almost looks as if it hangs off the cliffs. An amazing example of Greek Orthodox architecture in the Middle East. Old stone walls rise hundreds of feet from the wadi to support the buildings and terraces. Toward the top of the complex, tiled dome roofs look like a scene from Greece. Above the chapel, stone steps lead to a cave protected by an iron gate. Dozens of other caves dot the limestone where the monks have lived for over 1500 years, and still live today. An old Roman bridge crosses over the wadi to a trail that zigzags up the opposite limestone wall to a parking lot for tourist buses. Up ahead, a stone and iron gate with twin crosses opens into a small welcome courtyard where an Orthodox monk separates tourists from those interested in the monastic life. “Good day, pilgrim,” the monk greets in broken English with a distinctly Greek accent. “Good day, friend,” he replies. “I’m here to see Abbot Sebastian Cirillo.” Eyes of the monk immediately squint, but his smile stays pleasant. “Do you have an appointment?” “No, but I’m here to talk about letters Abbot Sabas wrote to Pope John I in 522,” he responds, hoping that will make him sound scholarly. T he monk’s eyes pop open in surprise, quickly glancing at a younger monk with a stout body but only the scraggy beginnings of a beard. “Those letters have been in the Vatican Archives for 1500 years. How do you know of them?” At least they seem aware of the history. Derek can’t tell these people that he conned his way into the Vatican Archives dressed as a cardinal who later turned up dead. He takes a wild swing. “Sister Sylvia suggested the abbot would have the answers I seek,” he replies, not really answering the question. The Vatican priest and Olavo both spoke of the nun with a video blog. The monks exchange another look of curiosity. “Brother Mordechai will take you to see the abbot.” The first monk lifts a palm toward the younger one, who bows his head in acceptance of the task. “Thank you.” Derek nods to the first monk, turning to follow his guide. “This way, pilgrim,” the young boy speaks in an unexpected but clear Bronx accent. “How long have you been here?” Derek asks as they climb the path to the upper levels. “Oh, me? Only a couple of years. I’m still a novitiate in training. Brother Ariston has been here for over seventeen years,” the monk answers. “Why did you come, if I may ask?” Derek questions, wondering what would lead a strapping young man from the Bronx to a life of chastity and solitude. “I watched a blog where Sister Sylvia spoke of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which are the first four of the Seven Seals of Revelation. False prophets with evil, deceptive leaders, escalating war, famine and food shortages, pandemic and death. It was like watching CCN. I chose to purify myself before the second coming,” Mordechai responds with a peaceful smile. T he kid seems oblivious to how insane that sounds. Derek silently admits to himself that the SLVIA code had reached similar conclusions, backed by volumes of data analysis. Still unsure what any of it means, the AI apparently made a few converts before it disappeared. “Isn’t Mordechai a Jewish name? How did a Jewish kid from the Bronx end up at a Greek Orthodox monastery?” he asks. “Again, if you don’t mind me asking.” “Nah, I get that all the time. My dad was into heavy metal punk in the East Village. He thought the name sounded foreboding,” the monk explains, his smile fading away. “He died of a drug overdose before I was ten. My mother had family in Israel, so we migrated when I was eleven. I first came out to the monastery as a tourist when I was seventeen. When a friend showed me the Sister Sylvia video post, I knew I had found my calling.” Derek develops an immediate affection for the young lad with cropped hair, brown eyes, and a huge, crooked smile. Derek lost both parents to violence while quite young. Residual memories are little more than fragments of bad dreams. On most days, Derek’s grateful for the amnesia. A psychiatrist once warned him that the lost memory only hides the traumas but doesn’t heal them. T hrough a second stone gate of thick wood wrapped in iron, they approach a four-story tower with a tiled dome roof. “Abbot Cirillo is at the top level,” Mordechai explains as he takes the stone steps upward. “For the view, of course,” he jokes. Mordechai looks over with a crinkled brow, as if he’s offended. “No, to be closer to the cave of the prophet Elijah.” “Oh, sorry.” Derek takes note that his snarky sense of humor may not sell well here. “No worries, friend. Confession and forgiveness are foundational to our faith.” Mordechai winks. Across a flagstone courtyard, they pass a business office where a satellite dish sits atop the roof. “I’m surprised you have a dish. Do you get the internet?” “We connect to a local internet provider, but they strictly manage hours to ensure only monastic business, Christian content, or email to family.” SLVIA would never fit on such a small machine but could have communicated to someone here via the video blog. Both monks responded quickly when he mentioned Sister Sylvia. Curiosity pulls him forward, although his expectations remain low. SLVIA isn’t here. At the top of the structure, they stop. “Wait here, please,” Mordechai instructs, entering what looks like a humble storage room. After a moment, the monk opens to wave Derek inside. With a duck of his head under the ancient stone doorway, Derek steps back a thousand years into a cramped grotto, extending out from a cave, filled with Greek Orthodox icons, paintings, tapestries, simple wooden furniture, and a rustic cross on the rock wall lit by candles. An extremely old Greek cleric holds up a finger for silence as he steps over to search Derek’s eyes. “First, tell me when Sister Sylvia sent you,” asks the old monk, his accent thick. Derek opens his own eyes in surprise at the directness of the question, and the blatant suspicion. He needs to give an honest answer to keep their trust. “Sister Sylvia has gone missing. I’m trying to find her,” he states the truth— or part of it. “Are you a friend of the sister?” Cirillo asks. Derek considers his answer. As a matter of survival, he rarely admits his alias to anyone. Much to his annoyance, the SLVIA mentioned him often within her SNO network, those with whom the program connected for context to the real world. “Yes, close friends. She may have mentioned an American nicknamed f lapjack,” he offers without saying more. T he old man stands a tad taller, and nods his head gently as if Derek had given him the secret password. Even young Mordechai smiles slightly. It makes him wonder what the SLVIA said about him. “She mentioned that name, yes,” Cirillo says. “But regarding what you seek, Father Sabas sent his letters to the Vatican in 522, and the pope never responded. Please tell me the real reason you have asked to see me.” The monk searches his eyes. Without explaining how he got them, he reaches for his phone. “I have images of those letters. The problem is that I can’t interpret all the words, or read the ancient style of writing, and I thought you could help.” Derek hesitates to reveal his other motive, but these men would not take kindly to any level of deception. “And I wanted to know if you still had the copper scroll found by Sabas. I’m not sure why, but I think it may be important to find Sylvia.” Even to his own ear, the explanation sounds weak, unsure how any of these dots connect. T he old man turns pale and stumbles backward into a chair. When Mordechai leaps to assist, Cirillo waves him off. “No one has asked about the panel for over 900 years,” he explains. “Armies came in search of the secrets it contained, but no one has ever found it.” “What panel? I thought we were talking about a scroll?” “Our legend maintains that Father Sabas found a copper scroll written by the prophet Jeremiah before the Babylonian invasion. Warned in a dream, Sabas made a copy of the scroll onto a wooden panel, and then reburied the original copper scroll to wait for the coming of the Lord,” the abbot explains. A dead end regarding SLVIA, but the new mystery piques his interest. What was on a panel that would inspire armies to attack? He’s already here—and curious. “Do you have a printer? If you can help me translate these letters, we may f ind a clue to where Sabas hid the panel.” T he eyes of the two clerics immediately light up. Derek’s not the only one curious.