The Armageddon Conspiracy (66 page)

Sinclair shook his head.
‘The Ark was
removed from the Temple of Solomon by the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah
in 597 BCE before the Temple was plundered by the invading
Babylonians.
In 586 BCE, the Temple and the entire city of
Jerusalem were razed to the ground as punishment for a Hebrew
uprising, but the Ark had long since been removed to safety.

‘
In the second book of
Maccabees, it says:
He came forth to the
mountain where Moses went up and saw the inheritance of God.
And
when Jeremiah came thither he found a hollow cave and he carried in
thither the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant and the Altar of
Incense, and so stopped the door.

‘
That means the Ark was
hidden in either the mountain where Moses was shown the Promised
Land, or the mountain where Moses spent forty days and nights
communing with Jehovah, being shown what the future held for the
Jews if they kept their sacred Covenant with Jehovah.
De Sudeley
decided the latter was more likely.’

‘
So, Ralph de Sudeley
thought Jeremiah took the Ark to Mount Sinai in 597 BCE, and that’s
where it stayed for the next eighteen hundred years, is that what
you’re saying?’

‘
Exactly.
It lay hidden
for all those centuries until de Sudeley uncovered it – the first
man to look upon it since Jeremiah.
The reason no one could find it
was, amazingly, that no one was sure where Mount Sinai was.
It
didn’t exist on any map, and only the ancient Israelites ever
called it by that name.
De Sudeley, in his Templar fortress
guarding the mountain passes around Petra, became obsessed with
solving the mystery.
After long study of the Books of Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy describing the wanderings of the
Jews after their escape from Egypt, he worked out that Mount Sinai
must in fact be Jebel Al-Madhbah – the Mountain of the Altar.
This
was the very mountain into which the
Treasury
at Petra was cut.
The Ark and
the other items, he soon discovered, were concealed in a secret
chamber beneath the
Treasury
, exactly where Jeremiah left
them all those centuries before.’

‘
Jeremiah hid the Ark
there because that was where it was made in the first place.
It was
Jehovah’s Holy Mountain, and it was from here that it was taken to
Jerusalem.
When it had to be removed from the Temple for
safekeeping, there was nothing more logical than to take it back to
exactly where it came from.
It wasn’t hidden in any secret passages
under the Temple, it wasn’t taken to Ethiopia, Babylon, Rome,
Southern France, Ireland or anywhere else.
It simply retraced its
original journey, but in the opposite direction.

‘
De Sudeley shipped the
Ark back to England – to Glastonbury, mythical Avalon.
It was the
most scared location he could think of in England.
Since the Ark
was taken from Mount Sinai to Temple Mount, he thought it right
that it should be taken to another sacred mountain: Glastonbury
Tor.
He would never have been allowed to recreate Solomon’s Temple
on the crest of the Tor, so the next obvious step was to put
it
under
the
mountain rather than on it.
Doing it this way served a second
purpose – it demonstrated that Jehovah was a subterranean being, a
shameful creature lurking in the dark.’

‘
But why would Gnostics
recreate the temple of the god they hated?’

‘
Isn’t it obvious?
–
to destroy him
.
Jehovah appears only in specific conditions.
He gave Moses precise
instructions for the construction of the Ark, and gave Solomon
detailed plans for the construction of the Temple to house the Ark.
If any of the rules are transgressed, he won’t appear.
That’s the
reason why the previous attempts to kill Jehovah failed.
This time
there will be no mistakes.
We’ve built Jerusalem in England’s green
and pleasant land, just as it says in William Blake’s poem.
Jehovah
appeared before the High Priests in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem,
and now he will appear before you, the last descendant of the last
High Priest, in this exact replica of Solomon’s Temple in this New
Jerusalem.’

Lucy turned away.
The plan seemed both
brilliant and insane.
Now, she understood, it wasn’t a question of
poking a spear into a box.
They were actually intending to conjure
up Jehovah.
It would then be her task to pierce him, just as
Longinus pierced Christ.

The others had spread out and were
gazing reverentially at everything around them.
Gresnick and James
stood on opposite sides of the bronze basin, staring into the
shimmering water.

Lucy wondered what James was thinking.
There was such a chasm between them now and it broke her heart.
Before this was all over, she wanted a chance to be alone with him,
to give him a big hug maybe, or even just hold his hand, if only
for a moment.
Even though he’d betrayed her, she would forgive
him.

The figure that
appeared without warning in the corner of her vision took her
completely by surprise.
No one else had noticed him, sneaking out
from a recess under the sacrificial altar.
Unlike everyone else,
the man’s face was contorted with hatred.
It took her a moment to
realise that his uniform was both familiar and wrong.
That
face.
It was Kruger’s
brother.
He must have tracked them all the way from Cadbury, and
crept in behind them while they were distracted by the wondrous
sights.

‘
Behold the
Antichrist,’ he shrieked at Lucy.
‘Your name is Abaddon, Azreal,
Apollyon.’

There was an object in his hand.
He
threw it and it rolled over the sandstone towards her feet.

A hand grenade, without
its pin
.

82

A
moment.
A
lifetime.
Lucy watched the grenade bobbling towards her.
With each
turn, it seemed to move slower and slower.
The world had dissolved
into slow motion, moving frame by frame.
She stared at the faces
around her, each showing their awareness that as soon as the
grenade exploded they would all die.
The Big Bang they had planned
so elaborately had shrunk to a small bang here and now.

Sinclair looked deathly pale.
Morson’s
mouth was open, Gresnick wide-eyed.
As for James, he was doing what
no one else was…he was diving towards the grenade.

She caught a glimpse of
his face.
There was so much regret in his eyes, self-disgust,
sorrow.
But there was love there too, love like she’d never seen
before.
All consuming, indestructible,
aching
.

James succeeded in
covering the grenade with his body.
Words tried to come out of
Lucy’s mouth, but nothing emerged, as if they’d collided and
destroyed each other before they could escape:
Don’t, James.
I love you.
I forgive you.
I can’t live without
you.

Then James seemed to glow, his midriff
becoming almost transparent with the intensity of the light.
He was
like some angel, so much brighter than everyone around him.
But
then the light faded and he seemed to start fragmenting, tiny stars
shooting from him.
No sound.
Nothing at all.

Time accelerated again, dreamtime
giving way to real time.
Now sound came, such a shattering noise,
carrying so much destruction.
Smashing bones, tearing flesh,
rupturing blood vessels.
Bits of James’ body flew outwards over the
sandstone, beneath the blue-painted Judean sky.

Lucy smelled charred flesh.
Wisps of
smoke drifted up from James’ body.
Little sputters of red were
everywhere, his lifeblood draining away.
Lucy tried to move, but
her legs resisted.
She wanted to be with James, to kiss him – the
last kiss, the kiss to make all future kisses mere shadows.

James twisted round, panting, with his
upper body almost separated from the lower.
A gaping hole was where
his abdomen should have been.
Sticky, blasted intestines.
Charcoal
skin.

Lucy was at last able
to move and she crouched over James.
He was mouthing something.
She
put her ear to his mouth, praying he was saying
I love you
, dreading that he might be
begging for her forgiveness.
She couldn’t bear that.
Whatever he’d
done, she was responsible.
She was the guilty one, the one who’d
violated love.

In little more than a wheeze, James
whispered, ‘So much beauty.’

Lucy stared at him, grief-stricken.
Life was fleeing from him.
She could practically see his memories
switching off one by one.
With each of those vanishing thoughts,
parts of her were dying too.
They say we live in the memories of
those who know us, but that means we die too when those memories
perish.

With one final effort, James reached up
and gripped Lucy’s shoulder, his lips searching for hers.
‘Let the
birds sing, Lucy,’ he said.
‘Let them sing to you of how much I
loved you.’
He collapsed back, his eyes staring out lifelessly from
his pale face.

Lucy wanted to wail, but no sound came.
To her right, Kruger’s brother had been stabbed by one of the
knights and was lying on his back with a sword buried in his chest,
blood spreading around his body over the sandstone.

Tears streamed down
Lucy’s cheeks.
She couldn’t believe that James was dead.
As she
took his hand, she felt the warmth of his body dissipating.
Soon he
was freezing cold.
In her mind, blue.
In
the blue
.
And never getting out
again.

83

S
ounds.
Voices.
Faces were gazing down at Lucy.
She saw their lips moving, but she
couldn’t understand anything they were saying.

Sinclair grabbed her shoulders and
shook her.
She felt her torso surging backwards and forwards.
The
movement reassured her somehow.
She was still capable of feeling.
She could channel her anguish into that motion.

Sinclair’s voice began to penetrate.
‘You can end this vale of suffering,’ he was saying.
‘Now, more
than ever, you can see why this pain must end.’

But superimposed over
Sinclair’s words, she heard James’ dying voice.
So much beauty
.
Why did he say that?
It made no sense.
He said he wanted the birds to sing of his love
for her.
Why didn’t he just say
I love
you
?

‘
Get up,’ Sinclair
yelled.

Lucy struggled to her feet, trying not
to look at James, already trying to forget him.
If she didn’t, she
wouldn’t be able to take another step.
She’d lie down beside him
and simply fade away.
Sinclair took her hand and dragged her away.
She caught sight of Gresnick.
There was a look in his eyes.
Pity,
regret?
It made her feel sick.

They walked up several marble steps,
past Boaz and Jachin, the two towering bronze pillars, and stepped
into the Temple’s porch.
The floor was of patterned marble, in
black and white squares.
A strange coolness spread through the air.
And something else was all too palpable – the feeling of an
unutterably unworldly presence nearby.

Sinclair kept talking to her and Lucy
tried her hardest to concentrate.
There was something comforting
about the small details he described.
They took her mind off James,
off the darkness diffusing through her mind like black smoke.