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

Halfway between the five resting underground and the three doing guard duty up on the cliff, fifteen people turned over in their sleeping bags; perhaps they missed the blasts from the air horn that Professor Forrester had used to get them out of bed before dawn. The sun came up at 5:33 a.m., and was greeted by silence.

Towards 6:15 a.m., roughly the same time that Orville Watson and Father Albert were entering the lobby of Kayn Tower, the first member of the expedition to rouse himself was Nuri Zayit the cook. He prodded his assistant Rani with his foot and stepped outside. As soon as he got to the mess tent he began to prepare instant coffee using evaporated milk instead of water. There weren’t many cartons of milk or juice left, since people were drinking them to compensate for the lack of water, and there was no fruit, so the only thing the chef could do was make omelettes and scrambled eggs. The old mute threw all his energy and a handful of the remaining parsley into the meal, communicating, as he had always done, through his culinary skills.

In the infirmary tent, Harel untangled herself from Andrea’s embrace and went to check on Professor Forester. The old man was connected to an oxygen tank, but his condition had only worsened. The doctor doubted that he would last beyond that night. Shaking her head to dispel the thought, she returned to wake Andrea with a kiss. As they caressed and made small talk, both of them began to realise that they were falling in love. Finally they got dressed and headed for the mess tent to have breakfast.

Fowler, who now shared a tent with just Pappas, started his day by going against his better judgement and made a mistake. Thinking that everyone in the soldiers’ tent was asleep, he slid outside and made a call to Albert on his satellite phone. The young priest answered and impatiently told him to call back in twenty minutes. Fowler hung up, relieved that the call had been so brief but worried about having to try his luck again so soon.

As for David Pappas, he woke up a little before six thirty and went to see Professor Forrester, hoping that he would be better but also hoping to rid himself of the guilt he felt following last night’s dream, in which he was the only archaeologist left alive when the Ark finally saw the light of day.

In the soldiers’ tent, Marla Jackson was watching the back of her commander and lover from her mattress – they never slept together when they were on a mission but would sneak off together once in a while on ‘reconnaissance’. She wondered what the South African was thinking.

Dekker was one of those for whom dawn brought the breath of the dead, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. In a brief moment of wakefulness between two successive nightmares, he thought he had seen the frequency scanner screen display a signal, but it was too quick to fix a position. Suddenly he leapt up and started giving orders.

In Raymond Kayn’s tent, Russell was laying out his boss’s clothes and urging him at least to take his red pill. Reluctantly Kayn agreed then spat it out when Russell wasn’t looking. He felt strangely calm. At last, the whole purpose of his sixty-eight years would be fulfilled.

In a more modest tent, Tommy Eichberg discreetly stuck his finger in his nose, scratched his behind, and walked to the bathroom looking for Brian Hanley. He needed his help to fix a piece they needed for the drill. They had to get through eight feet of wall but if they drilled from the top they could reduce some of the vertical pressure and then remove the stones by hand. If they worked quickly, they could be finished in six hours. Of course, it didn’t help that Hanley was nowhere to be found.

As for Huqan, he checked his watch. Over the past week he had worked out the best place from which to get a good view over the whole site. Now he waited for the soldiers to change shift. Waiting suited him fine. He had waited a lifetime.

NEW YORK

Wednesday, 19 July 2006. 11:41 p.m.

7456898123

The computer found the code in exactly two minutes and forty-three seconds. This was fortunate because Albert had been wrong in his calculations about how long it would take the guards to show up. The door at the end of the hall opened almost at the same time as that of the lift.

‘Hold it!’

Two of the guards and a policeman entered the hallway frowning, their guns drawn. They were not too happy about all the excitement. Albert and Orville threw themselves into the lift. They could hear the sound of feet running on the carpet and saw a hand reaching in to try to stop the lift. It missed by a few inches.

The door closed with a scratching noise. Outside they could make out the muffled voices of the guards.

‘How do you open this thing?’ the policeman said.

‘They won’t get far. This lift needs a special key to operate it. Nobody can make it go without it.’

‘Activate the emergency system you told me about.’

‘Yes, sir. Right away. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.’

Orville felt his heart pounding as he turned to Albert.

‘Fuck, they’re going to get us!’

The priest was smiling.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you? Think of something,’ Orville hissed.

‘I already have. When we went into Kayn Tower’s computer system this morning, it was impossible to get to the electronic key in their system that makes the lift doors open.’

‘Fucking impossible,’ agreed Orville, who didn’t like being beaten by anything, but on this occasion had run into the mother of all firewalls.

‘You may be a great spy and you certainly know a few tricks… but you lack the one thing that is essential in a great hacker: lateral thinking,’ Albert said. He crossed his arms behind his head, as if he were relaxing in his living room. ‘When the doors are locked, you use the windows. Or in this case you change the sequence that determines the lift’s position, and the order of the floors. A simple step that wasn’t blocked. Now the Kayn computer thinks that the lift’s on the thirty-ninth floor instead of the thirty-eighth.’

‘So?’ said Orville, slightly annoyed by the priest’s bragging, but also curious.

‘Well, my friend, in this kind of situation all the emergency systems in this city make the lifts go down to the last available floor and then open the door.’

At that very moment, after a brief shudder, the lift started going up. They could hear the shocked guards yelling outside.

‘Up is down and down is up,’ Orville said, clapping his hands in the middle of a cloud of mint disinfectant. ‘You’re a genius.’

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Thursday, 20 July 2006. 6:43 a.m.

Fowler wasn’t ready to risk Andrea’s life again. Using the satellite phone without any precautions was insane.

It made no sense for someone with his experience to make the same error twice. This would be the third time.

The first had been the previous night. The priest had raised his eyes from his prayer book as the excavation team came out of the cave carrying the half-dead body of Professor Forrester. Andrea came running over to him and told him what had happened. The reporter said they were certain that a gold box lay hidden inside the cave, and Fowler no longer had any doubts. Taking advantage of the general excitement caused by the news, he had called Albert, who explained that he was going to try one last time to get information on the terrorist group and Huqan around midnight in New York, a couple of hours after dawn in Jordan. The call lasted exactly thirteen seconds.

The second one had taken place earlier that morning, when Fowler had jumped the gun and called. That call lasted six seconds. He doubted the scanner had time to work out where the signal came from.