The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (22 page)

“A
Jewish
ritual? Are you crazy, man?”

Belloq said nothing. He moved toward the foot of the ancient steps; the sun, an outrage of color as it waned, hung low in the distance, touching everything with a bewildering array of oranges and reds and yellows.

He moved to the first step, glancing briefly at the German soldiers around him. Klieg lights had been set up, illuminating the stairs, the Ark. Belloq was certain, as he looked at it, that he heard it humming. And he was almost sure that it began to emit a glow of some kind. But then something happened, something distracted him, pulled him back to earth; a movement, a shadow, he couldn’t be sure. He swung around to see one of the soldiers behave in a strange fashion, moving in a hunched way. He wore his helmet at an awkward angle, as if he sought to conceal his face. But it wasn’t just this that so distracted Belloq, it was a weird sense of familiarity.

What? How? He stared—realizing that the soldier was struggling under the weight of a grenade launcher, which he hadn’t noticed at first in the dying light. But that strange sense, that itch—what did it mean? A darkness crossed his mind. A darkness that was lit only when the soldier removed his helmet and leveled the grenade launcher up the steps at the Ark—the Ark, which had been de-crated and looked vulnerable up on the slab.

“Hold it,” Indy shouted. “One move from anybody and I blow that box back to Moses.”

“Jones, your persistence surprises me. You are going to give mercenaries a bad name,” Belloq said.

Dietrich interrupted. “Dr. Jones, surely you don’t think you can escape from this island.”

“That depends on how reasonable we’re all willing to be. All I want is the girl. We’ll keep possession of the Ark only until we’ve got safe transport to England. Then it’s all yours.”

“If we refuse?” Dietrich wanted to know.

“Then the Ark and some of us are going up in a big bang. And I don’t think Hitler would like that a bit.”

Indy began to move toward Marion, who was struggling with her bonds.

“You look fine in a German outfit, Jones,” Belloq said.

“You look pretty good in your robes too.”

But somebody else was moving now, approaching Indy from behind. And even as the girl began to scream in warning, Belloq recognized Mohler. The captain threw himself at Indy, knocking the weapon from his hand and bringing him to the ground. Jones—a gallant heart, Belloq thought, a reckless courage—lashed out at the soldier with his fist, then drove his knee upward in Mohler’s groin. The captain groaned and rolled away, but Indy was already surrounded by soldiers, and although he fought them, although he fell kicking amid a bunch of helmets and jackboots, he was overpowered by numbers. Belloq shook his head and smiled in a pale way. He looked at Indy, who was being pinned by soldiers.

“A good try, Jones. A good effort.”

And then Dietrich was coming through the ranks. “Foolish, very foolish,” he said. “I cannot believe your recklessness.”

“I’m trying to give it up,” Indy said. He struggled with the soldiers who held him: useless.

“I have the cure for it,” Dietrich said. He took his pistol from its holster, smiling.

Indy stared at the gun, then glanced at Marion, who had her eyes shut tight and was sobbing in a broken way.

Dietrich raised the pistol, aimed.

“Wait!”

Belloq’s voice was thunderous, awesome, and his face looked malign in the intense light of the klieg lamps. The gun in Dietrich’s hand was lowered.

Belloq said, “This man has been an irritation to me for years, Colonel Dietrich. Sometimes, I admit, he has amused me. And although I would also like to witness his end, I would like him to suffer one last defeat. Let him live until I have opened the Ark. Let him live that long. Whatever treasures may lie in the Ark will be denied him. The contents will be hidden from his view. I enjoy the idea. This is a prize he has dreamed of for years—and now he will never get any closer to it. When I have opened the Ark, you can dispose of him. For now, I suggest you tie him up beside the girl.” And Belloq laughed, a hollow laugh that echoed in the darkness.

Indy was dragged to the statue and bound against it, his shoulder to Marion’s.

“I’m afraid, Indy,” she said.

“There’s never been a better time for it.”

The Ark began to hum, and Indy turned to watch Belloq climb the steps to the altar. It galled him to think of Belloq’s hands on the Ark, Belloq opening it.
The prize.
And he would see none of it. You live a lifetime with the constant ambition of reaching a goal, and then, when it’s there, when it’s in front of you,
wham
—all you have left is the bitter taste of defeat. How could he watch the insane Frenchman, dressed like some medieval rabbi, go up the steps to the Ark?

How could he
not
watch?

“I think we’re going to die, Indy,” Marion said. “Unless you’ve figured something out.”

Indy, barely hearing her, said nothing: there was something else now, something that was beginning to intrude on his mind—the sound of humming, low and constant, that seemed to be emerging from the Ark. How could that be? He stared at Belloq as the robed figure climbed to the slab.

“So how do we get out of this?” Marion asked again.

“God knows.”

“Is that a play on words?” she said.

“Maybe.”

“It’s a hell of a time to be making bad jokes, Jones.” She turned to him; there were circles of fatigue under her eyes. “Still. I love you for it.”

“Do you?”

“Love you? Sure.”

“I think it’s reciprocal,” Indy said, a little surprised at himself.

“It’s also somewhat doomed,” Marion said.

“We’ll see.”

Belloq, remembering the words of an old Hebraic chant, words he’d remembered from the parchment that had had the picture of the headpiece, started to sing in a low, monotonous way. He chanted as he climbed the steps, hearing the sound of the Ark accompany his voice, the sound of humming. It was growing in intensity, rumbling, filling the darkness. The Ark’s power, the Ark’s intense power. It moved in Belloq’s blood, bewildering, demanding to be understood. The power. The knowledge. He paused near the top of the steps, chanting still but unable to hear his own voice now. The humming, the humming—it was growing, slicing through the night, filling all the silences. Then he climbed more, reached the top, stared at the Ark. Despite the dust of centuries, despite neglect, it was the most beautiful thing Belloq had ever seen. And it glowed, it glowed, feebly at first and then more brightly, as he looked at it. He was filled with wonder, watching the angers, the shining gold, the inner glow. The noise, too, rumbled through him, shook and surprised him. He felt himself begin to vibrate, as if the tremor might cause him to disintegrate and go spinning out into space. But there wasn’t space, there wasn’t time: his entire being was defined by the Ark, delineated by this relic of man’s communication with God.

Speak to me.

Tell me what you know, tell me what the secrets of existence are.

His own voice seemed to be issuing from every part of his body now, through mouth, pores, blood cells. And he was rising, floating, distinct from the rigid world of logic all around him, defying the laws of the universe.
Speak to me. Tell me.
He raised the ivory rod, placing it under the lid, then labored to pry the lid open. The humming was louder now, all-consuming. He didn’t hear the klieg lights explode below, the showers of broken glass that fell like worthless diamonds into the darkness. The humming—the voice of God, he thought.
Speak to me. Speak to me.
And then, as he worked with the rod, he felt suddenly blank, as if he hadn’t existed until this moment, as if all memories had been erased, blank and strangely calm, at peace, undergoing a sense of oneness with the night around him, linked by all kinds of connections to the universe. Bound to the cosmos, to all matter that floated and expanded and shrank in the farthest estuaries of space, to exploding stars, spinning planets, and even to the unknowable dark of infinity. He ceased to exist. Whoever Belloq had been, he was no longer. He was nothing now: he existed only as the sound that came from the Ark. The sound of God.

“He’s going to open it,” Indy said.

“The noise,” Marion said. “I wish I could put my hands to my ears. What is that noise?”

“The Ark.”

“The Ark?”

Indy was thinking about something, an eclipsed memory, something that shifted loosely in his mind. What? What was it? Something he’d heard recently.
What?
The Ark. Something to do with the Ark.
What what what?

The Ark, the Ark—try to remember!

Up on the slab, at the top of the crude steps, Belloq was trying to open the lid. Lamps were exploding in violent showers of sharded glass. Even the moon, visible now in the night sky, seemed like an orb about to erupt and shatter. The night, the whole night, was like a great bomb attached to the end of a short fuse—a lit fuse, Indy thought. What is it? What am I trying to remember?

The lid was opening.

Belloq, sweating, perspiring in the heavy robes, applied the ivory rod while he kept up the chant that was inaudible now under the noise of the Ark. The moment. The moment of truth. Revelation. The mysterious networks of the divine. He groaned and raised the lid. It sprung open all at once and the light that emanated from within blinded him. But he didn’t step away, didn’t step back, didn’t move. The light hypnotized him as surely as the sound mesmerized him. He was devoid of the capacity to move. Muscles froze. His body ceased to work.
The lid.

It was the last thing he saw.

Because then the night was filled with fire rockets that screamed out of the Ark, pillars of flame that stunned the darkness, outreaches of fire searing the heavens. A white circle of light made a flashing ring around the island, a light that made the ocean glow and whipped up currents of spray, forcing a broken tide to rise upward in the dark.
The light, it was the light of the first day of the universe, the light of newness, of things freshly born, it was the light that God made: the light of creation.
And it pierced Belloq with the hard brightness of an inconceivable diamond, a light beyond the sorrowful limitations of any precious stone. It carved at his heart, shattered him. And it was more than a light—it was a weapon, a force, that drove through Belloq and lit him with the power of a billion candles: he was white, orange, blue, savaged by this electricity that stormed from the Ark.

And he smiled.

He smiled because, for a moment, he
was
the power. The power absorbed him. There was no distinction between the man and the force. Then the moment passed. Then his eyes disintegrated in the sockets, leaving black sightless holes, and his skin began to peel from the bone, curling back as if seized by a sudden leprosy, rotting, burning, scorched, blackened. And still he smiled. He smiled even as he began to change from something human to something touched by God, touched by God’s rage, something that turned, silently, to a layer of dust.

When the lights began to shaft the dark, when the entire sky was filling with the force of the Ark, Indy had involuntarily shut his eyes—blinded by the power. And then all at once he remembered, he remembered what had eluded him before, the night he’d spent in the bouse of Imam:
Those who would open the Ark and release its force will die if they look upon it . . .
And through the noise, the blinding white pillars that had made the stars fade, he’d called to Marion:
Don’t look!

Keep your eyes closed!

She had twisted her face away from the first flare, the eruption of fire, and then, even if what he said puzzled her, she shut her eyes tight. She was afraid, afraid and overawed. And still she wanted to look. Still she was drawn to the great celestial flare, to the insane destruction of the night.

Don’t look
—he kept saying that even as she felt herself weaken.

He kept repeating it. Screaming it.

The night, like a dynamo, hummed, groaned, roared; the lights that seared the night seemed to howl.

Don’t look don’t look don’t look!

The upraised tower of flame devastated. It hung in the sky like the shadow of a deity, a burning, shifting shadow composed not of darkness but of light, pure light. It hung there, both beautiful and monstrous, and it blinded those who looked upon it. It ripped eyes from the faces of the soldiers. It turned them from men into uniformed skeletons, covering the ground with bones, the black marks of scorches, covering everything with human debris. It burned the island, flattened trees, overturned boats, smashed the dock itself. It changed everything. Fire and light. It destroyed as though it were an anger that might never be appeased.

It broke the statue to which Indy and Marion were tied: the statue crumbled until it ceased to exist. And then the lid of the Ark slammed shut on the slab and the night became dark again and the ocean was silent. Indy waited for a long time before he looked.

The Ark was shining up there.

Shining with an intensity that suggested a contented silence; and a warning, a warning filled with menace.

Indy stared at Marion.

She was looking around speechlessly, staring at what the Ark had created. Wreckage, ruin, death. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t speak.

There was nothing to say.

Nothing.

The earth around them hadn’t been scorched. It was untouched.

She raised her face to the Ark.

She reached very slowly for Indy’s hand and held it tight.

S
UN STREAMED
through the windows of Colonel Musgrove’s office. Outside, across a thick lawn, was a stand of cherry trees, and the morning sky was clear, a pale blue. Musgrove was seated behind his desk. Eaton had a chair to the side of the desk. There was another man, a man who stood leaning against the wall and who hadn’t uttered a word; he had the sinister anonymity of a bureaucrat. He might have been rubber-stamped himself, Indy thought,
Powerful Civil Servant
in thick black letters on his brow.