Paul Christopher - The Templar throne

"I'll see what I can do."

The sea was black glass. The only motion of the dark water was a slow, rolling swell that gave the thirty-two-foot lobster boat a faintly nauseating corkscrew twist that was turning Meg a faint shade of green. The Deryldene D was making a steady twelve knots and had been doing so ever since leaving Halifax at dawn, almost seven hours ago. Above them the sky was a featureless gray slab.

"I was expecting worse weather than this," said Holliday, standing beside Gallant at the wheel and looking out over the slowly undulating sea. Laid out on the windscreen shelf in front of the wheel was a group of high-tech instruments, including a depth finder, a side-scanning sonar array, a fish finder, a color radar screen, and a marine radio.

"You know the expression 'the calm before the storm'?" said the maritimer.

"Sure," said Holliday.

"This is it," Gallant answered flatly.

"There's a storm coming?" Meg asked anxiously, perched on the bait box close to the transom.

"We're in a high-pressure system that's moving with the swell. We meet a low-pressure system and you get what's called a cyclonic effect. Down south they'd call it a tropical storm. It's how you get hurricanes."

"Please tell me we're not heading into a hurricane," pleaded Meg.

"Maybe not a hurricane yet, but odds are it'll become one before long. They've already evacuated the island and the offshore rigs nearby; they don't do that for an ordinary storm. The only question is when she hits," answered Gallant.

"Best guess?" Holliday asked.

Gallant shrugged and stroked his mustache. "Trying to guess what the sea's going to do is a fool's game," said the lobsterman. "But from my experience and the Doppler radar I'd say we've got a few hours yet."

"You're saying that Sable Island is deserted now?" Meg asked.

"For what it's worth," answered Gallant. "I've never seen one, but the captain of the QE2 ocean liner reported a ninety-two-foot wave nearby. That's the height of a ten-story building. Sable's barely thirteen feet above sea level. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be anywhere on the island when a wave like that hits."

"We should check all that equipment you bought," said Holliday pointedly. Meg nodded. Holliday led the way through the small hatchway- like door to the left of the wheel down three narrow steps.

There was a galley with a propane stove and burners on the left and a fold-up Formica table on the right with a vinyl-covered banquette against the starboard bulkhead. Everything in the little space seemed coated with a light sheen of old cooking oil and there was the distinct odor of boiled fish in the air. Holliday edged his way through the galley, ducking low, and stepped into the forward cabin.

The equipment was made up of two collapsible camping shovels, a pair of bright yellow, handheld Lowrance Safari GPS units and two very-high-end Garrett metal finders, smaller mine-detector-style versions of the big Garrett metal detector gates used in airports and secure facilities. They were lightweight and computerized.

Holliday sat down on the neatly made bunk against the port-side bulkhead and waited for Meg to join him. They were sitting in the bow now and the sliding, mild roller-coaster movement of the Deryldene D on the light swell was more pronounced. Meg's color deepened and she put a hand on her stomach.

"What do you want to check?" she said, obviously irritated. "The batteries are fully charged and the salesman calibrated the detectors for copper, bronze and iron as well as gold and silver. Those are the most likely metals the ark would have been sheathed in."

"I wanted to talk with you privately," answered Holliday.

"About what?" Meg swallowed. "And make it quick. I need some fresh air as soon as possible."

"All right. One quick question. When we were in that bar where we met Gallant you said you knew where the ark was buried. How is that possible since you didn't know about Sable Island until a few days ago?"

"My, my, aren't you the suspicious one," said Meg. She swallowed again and closed her eyes briefly as a wave of nausea hit her.

"Call it professional curiosity," said Holliday.

"Okay," she said and nodded. "To satisfy your curiosity." She took a deep shuddering breath to control her seasickness. "Hopefully it won't bruise that delicate male ego of yours, but I'm a historian as well, and sometimes I can figure out puzzles too."

"What puzzle?" Holliday asked.

"The painting in Prague. The one by Cranach. You couldn't figure out the six monks around the well, remember?"

"I'm with you so far."

"You told me there's a freshwater lake on Sable Island, right?"

"Lake Wallace. There's a spring somewhere but it's mostly rainwater runoff, which is why the water level rises and falls so dramatically, at least according to that book I read."

"But would it have been there in the time of the Blessed Juliana and Saint-Clair?"

"Presumably."

"Don't you see? Lake Wallace is the well," said Meg, managing a faint smile of triumph.

"And the six monks?"

"Sext," answered Meg.

"Pardon?"

"It's the most important of the canonical hours," explained Meg. "It's even sacred to the Jews. Sext is the sixth hour of the day. Originally sext was seen as dawn, but by the Blessed Juliana's day and the advent of clocks, prime, the first hour of the day, was arbitrarily set at six a.m. and sext officially became noon, the time Christ was crucified. Sext was also St. Benedict's most sacred time for prayer, and St. Benedict was the patron saint of the Templars. That's where Jean de Saint-Clair and the Blessed Juliana hid their holy treasure. The six o'clock position on the face of a sundial or a clock. We'll find the True Ark at the six o'clock position on the shore of Lake Wallace."

"Well, I'll be damned," whispered Holliday.

Dr. Rafi Wanounou, a professor of medieval archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sat under the fly tent that served as his office, sweating profusely and doing paperwork, most of which was scattered over the rough plywood table in front of him.

Through the open end of the tent he could see the entire archaeological site of the 4000 B.C. cult temple that had served the nomadic tribes passing through the desert. Beyond the ruins of the old temple where his students were laboring like busy little ants under the broiling sun, Rafi could see the white salt rime on the beaches and the blue-green expanse of the Dead Sea.

If he squinted he could faintly see Jordan ten miles away on the other side, and with a pair of good binoculars he could even make out the five-hundred-foot block of halite that was usually referred to as Mount Sodom.

It was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and it was almost time to call in the kids for lunch and a hydrating break and maybe even a trip to one of the springs surrounding the nearby Ein Gedi Oasis for a swim. Rafi sighed. The Chalcolithic period of Hebrew history was hardly his area of expertise, but like the rest of his colleagues in the department he had to lead his fair share of field trips to give the students experience doing site work.

Rafi sighed again; he was also worried about Peggy. She was only in her first trimester but he was already fretting over her. He had even been considering making the arduous hundred-kilometer journey back to Jerusalem later in the afternoon, even though Ein Gedi was hardly within commuting distance. Fifty miles on secondary desert roads in Israel wasn't like the same distance on a freeway in the United States. On the other hand, Peggy was worth it; in fact, meeting and falling in love with Peggy Blackstock had been the best thing that had ever happened to him; even his mother thought so, even though he'd married a shiksa who hadn't changed her name when they got married. He smiled; convincing Reyna Wanounou of anything was a small miracle, even his father said so.