Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

The Behemoth was heading slowly towards some piers, pulled by a tugboat from the Port of Aqaba. Harel pointed to the front of the ship.

‘That’s Aqaba, Jordan. And that’s Eilat, Israel. Look at how the two cities face each other, like mirror images.

‘It is beautiful. But it’s not the only thing… ’

Harel blushed slightly and looked away.

‘You can’t really appreciate it from the water,’ she went on, ‘but if we had come by plane you could see how the Gulf squares off the coastline. Aqaba occupies the eastern corner and Eilat the western one.

‘Now that you mention it, why didn’t we come by plane?’

‘Because officially, this is not an archaeological dig. Mr Kayn wants to recover the Ark and take it back to the United States. Jordan would never go along with that under any circumstances. Our cover is that we’re looking for phosphates, so we’ve come by sea as the other companies do. Hundreds of tons of phosphates are shipped out of Aqaba each day, bound for places all over the world. We’re a humble prospecting team. And we’re carrying our own vehicles in the hold of the ship.’

Andrea nodded thoughtfully. She was enjoying the peacefulness of the coast. She looked towards Eilat. Pleasure boats floated on the water near the city like white doves around a green nest.

‘I’ve never been to Israel.’

‘You should go sometime,’ Harel said, smiling sadly. ‘It’s a beautiful land. Like a garden of fruit and flowers torn out of the blood and sand of the desert.’

The reporter observed the doctor at length. Her curly hair and tanned complexion were even more beautiful in this light, as though any little defects her face might have had been diffused by the sight of her homeland.

‘I think I know what you mean, Doc.’

Andrea took out a wrinkled pack of Camels from her pyjama pocket and lit up a cigarette.

‘You shouldn’t have fallen asleep with them in your pocket.’

‘And I shouldn’t smoke, drink or sign up for expeditions that have been threatened by terrorists.’

‘Evidently we have more things in common than you’d think.’

Andrea stared at Harel, trying to work out what she meant. The doctor reached over and took a cigarette from the pack.

‘Wow, Doc. You don’t know how happy that makes me.’

‘Why?’

‘I love seeing doctors who smoke. It’s like a chink in their smug armour.’

Harel laughed.

‘I like you. That’s why it bothers me to see you in this damn situation.’

‘What situation?’ said Andrea, raising an eyebrow.

‘I’m talking about the attempt on your life yesterday.’

The reporter’s cigarette stopped midway to her mouth.

‘Who told you?’

‘Fowler.’

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘No, but I’m glad he told me.’

‘I’m going to kill him,’ Andrea said, crushing her cigarette against the railing. ‘You don’t know how ashamed I felt with everybody looking at me…’

‘I know he told you not to tell anybody. But believe me, my case is a little different.’

‘Look at that idiot. She can’t even keep her balance!’

‘Well, that’s not entirely untrue. Remember?’

Andrea was embarrassed at the reminder of the previous day when Harel had to grab her by her T-shirt just before the BA-160 showed up.

‘Don’t worry,’ Harel went on. ‘Fowler told me for a reason.’

‘That only he knows. I don’t trust him, Doc. We’ve run into each other before…’

‘And he saved your life then, too.’

‘I see you’ve been informed about that as well. While we’re at it, how the hell did he manage to get me out of the water?’

‘Father Fowler was an officer with the US Air Force. Part of an elite Special Ops unit that specialised in pararescue.’

‘I’ve heard of them: they go looking for pilots who’ve been shot down, isn’t that right?’

Harel nodded.

‘I think he’s taken a liking to you, Andrea. Maybe you remind him of someone.’

Andrea stared thoughtfully at Harel. There was some connection she wasn’t getting and she was determined to find out what it was. More than ever, Andrea was convinced that her reporting on a lost relic, or getting an interview with one of the weirdest and hardest to reach multimillionaires, was only part of the equation. On top of that, she had been dumped into the sea from a moving ship.

I’ll be damned if I can figure it out , thought the reporter. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on but the key must be Fowler, and Harel… and how much they’re willing to tell me .

‘You seem to know a lot about him.’

‘Well, Father Fowler likes to travel.’

‘Let’s be a little more specific, Doc. The world is a big place.’

‘Not the one in which he moves. Are you aware that he knew my father?’

‘He was an extraordinary man,’ Father Fowler said.

The women both turned around and saw the priest standing a few steps behind them.

‘Have you been here long?’ asked Andrea. A stupid question that only shows someone you’ve said something you don’t want them to know. Father Fowler ignored it. He had a grave look on his face.

‘We have an urgent job,’ he said.

SOMERSET AVENUE, WASHINGTON, DC

Wednesday, 12 July 2006. 1:59 a.m.

The CIA agent took a shocked Orville Watson through the reception area of his burnt-out office. There was still smoke in the air but even worse was the smell of soot, dirt and burned bodies. The wall-to-wall carpeting was covered in at least an inch of muddy water.

‘Be careful, Mr Watson. We’ve cut off the electricity supply to avoid short circuits. We’ll have to find our way with flashlights.’

Using the powerful beams of their flashlights, Orville and the agent passed through the rows of desks. The young man couldn’t believe his eyes. Each time the beam rested on an overturned desk, a sooty face or a smouldering wastebasket, he felt like crying. These people were his staff. This was his life. Meanwhile the agent – Orville thought it was the same one who had called him on his mobile just as he got off the plane, but he couldn’t be sure – was explaining every terrible detail of the attack. Orville gritted his teeth in silence.

‘The gunmen came in through the main entrance, blew away the receptionist, ripped out the telephone wires, and then opened fire on everyone else. Unfortunately, your employees were all at their desks. There were seventeen of them, is that correct?’

Orville nodded. His horrified eyes fell on Olga’s amber necklace. She was in accounting. He had given her the necklace for her birthday two weeks ago. The torchlight gave it an unearthly sheen. In the dark he couldn’t even recognise her burnt hands, which were now curved like claws.

‘They killed them one by one in cold blood. Your people had no way of getting out. The only exit was through the front door and the office is… what? A hundred and fifty square metres? There was nowhere to hide.’

Of course. Orville loved open spaces. The whole office was one diaphanous space made of glass, steel and wenge, the dark African wood. There were no doors or cubicles, only light.

‘After they were done, they placed a bomb in the closet at the far end and another at the entrance. Homemade explosives; nothing very powerful, but enough to set fire to everything.’

The computer terminals. A million dollars’ worth of hardware and millions of extremely valuable pieces of information compiled over the years, all lost. Last month he had changed his data storage back-up to Blu-ray disks. They had used nearly two hundred discs, more than 10 terabytes of information, which they kept in a fireproof cabinet… which now lay open and empty. How the hell had they known where to look?