Ark of Blood

Chapter 5

5

Jerusalem, Israel. 2.34pm

In the plush boardroom in the opulent King David Hotel, Lior Avidan paced up and down.

The terrorist bombing sixty years before had served to make this the most symbolic setting for peace summits and the signing of accords. It was the embodiment of ‘we will not negotiate with terrorists.’ It also had some of the world’s most sophisticated security systems, funded by foreign investment cash and energized by the will of Mossad to protect the symbolism of triumph over terrorism.

Yet it was only six days until the President of the United States sat down at this table for the Peace Accords and Lior felt an unease that went beyond his usual concerns at such a historic event. His team had been through the security arrangements multiple times but the arrangements still didn’t sit right with him. He needed to get to the sensation of separation he felt when he knew everything had been thought about, when everything had been planned for, when he had done his job correctly. Today didn’t feel like that. Something was very wrong.

First, the phone call from Washington.

A murder in the heart of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, the head of an Arab man on the replica Ark of the Covenant. The death had been covered up and hidden from the media, for the Masons were lightning rods for conspiracy theorists and the press would have a field day with the Peace Accords so close.

But it was the words painted on the mural that really stung him.

The Shoah was the term Jews used for the h*******t, the g******e of six million in Nazi Germany. It was the reason they would defend Israel to the death, for 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 to put themselves on the same level as Hitler.

Could this atrocity really have been carried out by extremist Jews?

Lior cursed and shook his head. Was it a warning or some kind of threat? Such a brutal murder was out of character for the usual anti-peace groups, represented by 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 come over the internet, gathering views with every minute that ticked by.

Lior sat down at the boardroom table and opened his laptop, flicking to the page that had been forwarded up the chain of command.

He examined the web page closely. It depicted an image of the Ark of the Covenant as it was marched around the walls of Jericho, hoisted high on golden poles perched on the shoulders of priests. The black and white drawing was so detailed, you could almost hear the blast of the shofar, the ram’s horn. According to the book of Joshua, the walls came tumbling down by the power of Ark, so the image was Jewish, but a text in Arabic was inscribed underneath.

“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 ye indeed have faith.”

It was a quote from the Koran, Surat al-Baqara 2: 248, not something that extremist Jews would usually be quoting.

Then underneath in Hebrew were words from the book of 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.”

Beneath the words was a counter, the seconds ticking away as Lior watched. His team had checked it several times.

It was counting down to the final day of the Peace Summit, to the exact time the President of the United States was due to sign the Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in six days time. Although the dates were widely known, the exact timetable for the signing was privileged information of which only a few were aware, so the leak was worrying and this strange threat a concern.

It seemed to Lior that the Ark was the one thing that would galvanize support in this city of contradictions for extremists on both sides. If the Ark were to fall into the hands of the Arabs, it would be a bargaining chip of astronomic proportions, or it would ignite a war in order 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 Temple again, uniting the Muslim nations against Israel and sparking a world war.

Whichever way he looked at it, the Ark could only bring violence.

Of course, recovering the Ark was a crazy idea, belonging more to Hollywood than 21st century Jerusalem. But this was a land where ancient relics that could change religious history were still being recovered from archaeological digs, and Lior knew it would be best for everyone if the Ark remained a legend.

Lior had worked closely with the intelligence services, but no one had a good hold on who was behind this threat. There were plenty of far-right religious crazies who claimed to be ushering in the final days but these events had two unusual aspects, for no group had claimed ownership and even the best hackers couldn’t trace the source of the site. The technical teams had been pinged around the world’s servers through companies and government sites and private addresses but it was untraceable. Even Lior’s best computer geeks couldn’t take the page down for long, so clearly the group behind it was well funded and professional, determined to fuel speculation about the Ark and the Peace Accords.

The second problem was that it seemed to suggest both an extremist Jewish as well as an extremist Muslim agenda and on the eve of the Peace Summits, it was a recipe for sleepless nights. Ironically, Lior thought, the extremists of all religions were closer to one another in ideology than to the moderates of their own faith.

He sighed with exhaustion, running his hands through his thick black hair. It had taken years to get back to this point.

The last time they had been this close to peace was in 1993 when Yasser Arafat had shaken hands with Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn, and the two men had shared the Nobel Peace Prize. The world had expected that event to usher in a new era of peace and both sides of the struggle had finally breathed a sigh of relief.

But that was blown apart when Rabin was assassinated by an extremist Jew and Arafat later ended his days under siege in Ramallah. Even now, his body was being exhumed over fears of polonium poisoning, heightening tensions between the two sides. With the second Intifada bringing years of violence, it had taken twenty years to rebuild trust.

Too many young people, his own children included, had grown up with conflict as their default position. Another upset at this stage would set the delicate process back another generation.

Lior could not let that happen.

He pushed his chair back and rose to stare out of the bay window towards the walls of the Old City. My heart is here, he thought, verses from the Talmud coming to 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.” As far clouds gathered for an oncoming storm, Lior shook his head, for it was also true that “God also gave ten measures of suffering to the world and nine of them fall on Jerusalem.”

Sitting back down, Lior thumbed through a thick file in front of him, the material too sensitive to be kept digitally in a world of increasing cyber crime. There hadn’t been any mention of the Ark of the Covenant from Arab groups before. It had always been American Christians insisting on finding the Ark here in Jerusalem. Like that crazy guy who had said it was under Golgotha where the blood of Christ had dripped down onto the Mercy Seat at the crucifixion. As long as they brought the right permits, they were no trouble, but this threat was new.

He scanned the data on right-wing Jewish groups determined to take back Temple Mount but the intelligence indicated that they focused more on protests and sudden violent outbursts, so this considered countdown wasn’t their style. According to Scripture, the Messiah could not come until the Temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem, and the Temple would be unfinished without both the real Ark of the Covenant. With those prerequisites, they would be waiting a long time.

So why were the group responsible for this threat even announcing themselves?

They didn’t seem to be demanding anything, just hinting that they had the Ark itself hidden away, waiting to be revealed. Lior frowned. This wasn’t a police problem yet, as nothing had actually happened in his jurisdiction so he had no power to act. 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, so how likely was it that this group could produce it in just a few days?

Yet Lior felt a deep unease, for the Ark was an ancient weapon as well as a symbol of triumph for the Jews. Could he risk ignoring such a threat? He had to do something but could not risk embroiling himself in dangerous rumor.

ARKANE owed him a favor since he had helped clear up the mess at the Ezra Institute, so perhaps he would give them a chance to solve the mystery.