The Sign (9 page)

He caught the bulldozer flat across the nose, a loud, bone-crushing splat erupting in the van. The man’s head ricocheted against the van’s wall before he curled over, writhing with pain.

Matt didn’t pause to watch. There were three other thugs to deal with. The two who’d been busy with Bellinger could wait. The bulldozer’s partner, also at the back of the van, was the more immediate threat, and he was already leaping at Matt. Matt steadied himself on his elbow and bent down as he followed through with his roll, the move adding momentum to his leg which lashed out and hammered the incoming attacker across the neck. As the man’s head bounced heavily off the van’s rear doors, Matt pounced up, grabbed his head with both hands, and pulled it down, connecting it with his knee. Something in the man’s face cracked audibly and he went reeling backward, toward the front of the van, falling over the immobile body of Bellinger and interrupting the other two men’s advance.

Matt saw them clambering over Bellinger and knew he only had a second or two of clear air. He also knew he wasn’t likely to take them out as easily.

There was only one option, really, and he didn’t hesitate.

He grabbed the rear door handle, yanked it open, and despite the micro-glimpse of a car trailing not too far back, flung himself out of the moving van.

He didn’t have far to free-fall before hitting the asphalt. It was beyond brutal. His left shoulder and hip took the brunt of it, a lightning bolt of pain shooting through him as he landed. He rolled on himself several times, a cascade of confusing, alternating glimpses of streetlights and tarmac flooding his senses, every inch of his body getting its share of beating. A sudden, ear-piercing shriek hounded him, bearing down on him alarmingly fast, the sound of rubber scraping deliriously across asphalt, the hard-braking car’s front bumper only a few feet behind him and gaining fast.

They finally came to a rest together, as if in a synchronized performance, Matt inches away from the car that had fishtailed slightly and was now at a slight angle to the road. Through his dazed whiteout from the pain and the headlights, Matt could feel the heat radiating out from the car’s grille, and the air was thick with the smell of burned rubber and brake pads. His shoulder was alight with pain. He steeled himself and straightened up, and glanced down the road. The van was quickly receding, one of the men—it was already too far for anything more specific—looking back before reaching out and slamming the door shut.

Matt pushed himself to his feet. His left leg almost gave way, but he steadied himself against the car’s fender. He staggered over to the driver’s window. The driver—a man, old, sixties plus—was staring at Matt with a combination of trepidation and disbelief. Matt bent down to look in on him. The old man’s window was still closed. Matt gestured for him to open it, but the man just sat there, riven with fear.

Matt rapped his knuckles against the window. “Open the window, goddammit,” he shouted, gesturing frantically. “Open it.”

The man hesitated, then shook his head, his brow furrowed with confusion.

Matt jangled the door handle brusquely, but the doors were locked. He slammed the flat of his hand against the window again, scowling at the old man and yelling, “Open the goddamn door.”

The man did nervous little mini-shakes with his head again, darted an anxious glance into his rearview mirror, glanced over at Matt again, then turned to face ahead and just hit the gas. Matt reeled back and just watched, dumbstruck, as the car tore off and disappeared into the darkness.

Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt

A
blossoming glint of golden light rose from behind the distant horizon as the three men climbed down the mountain.

They’d waited for close to an hour for Father Jerome to show up, and when he still hadn’t appeared, they’d finally given up and made their way back. They didn’t speak at all during the hike down or on the drive back. The abbot had simply nodded when asked by the younger monk if he’d been right about what they’d seen, and left it at that.

He needed to think.

Yusuf pulled up outside the monastery and offered to stick around should he be needed. The abbot told him he wasn’t, and thanked him, then his expression and his voice darkened.

“Yusuf,” he said gravely, “I need you to keep what you know about all this to yourself. No one else must be told. For now. Things could get out of hand very quickly if news of this came out. We need to handle this with great care. Do you understand?”

Yusuf nodded somberly, and kissed the abbot’s hand. “
Bi amrak, abouna.
” As you wish, Father.

The abbot studied him fervently for a beat, making sure his admonishment sank in, then nodded, giving him permission to leave. He and the monk watched as Yusuf climbed back into the Previa and drove away.

“What are we going to do?” Brother Ameen asked.

The abbot’s gaze followed the disappearing minivan. “First, I need to pray. This is all too . . . unsettling. Will you join me?”

“Of course.”

They entered the monastery through the small gate in the thick, forty-foot wall that surrounded it. Just inside the enclosure, to their right, the large
qasr
—the keep—a four-storied white cube punctured by tiny, irregular rectangular openings, squatted proudly in the dawn light, its timber drawbridge now permanently lowered and welcoming.

It hadn’t always been the case. The sixth-century monastery had been rebuilt several times during its turbulent history.

The valley of Wadi Natrun, which owed its name to the abundant natron in its soil, the sodium carbonate that was a key ingredient in mummification, was the birthplace of Christian monasticism. The tradition had started in the third and fourth centuries, when thousands of followers of Christ had fled there to escape from Roman persecution. Hundreds of years later, still more went there, this time to escape persecution at the hands of the Muslims. The valley held a special resonance for the faithful: It was there that Mary, Joseph, and their infant son had rested while escaping from King Herod’s men, before continuing on to Cairo.

At first, the small communities of early Christians had lived in the caves that dotted the low ridges overlooking the desert, surviving off the meager offerings of its scattered oases. Soon, they began to build monasteries where they hoped to worship in relative peace and safety, but the threats never went away, not for centuries. Desert tribes picked up the Romans’ baton of aggression and proved even more ruthless. The most vicious of those attacks, at the hands of Berbers in 817, decimated the monastery. When men didn’t threaten it, nature itself proved a willing understudy, with only one of the monastery’s monks surviving an outbreak of plague in the fourteenth century. And yet, time after time, the persistence and dedication of holy men kept on resurrecting it, and today, the monastery was home to over two hundred monks who followed in the footsteps of the desert fathers of the Old Testament and came here to escape from the distractions of daily life and the temptations of earthly desire to battle their own demons and pray for the salvation of mankind.

The valley had been an oasis of Christianity from the very first days of the movement. The monastic tradition was born there, long before it was eventually adopted by the Christians of Europe. For centuries, profoundly religious men had been drawn to its desolate wilderness. And on the dawn of this portentous day, the abbot thought, it seemed eminently possible that the valley hadn’t yet exhausted its relevance to the faithful.

And yet . . . the very thought scared him.

The world was a very different place.

More technologically advanced, undoubtedly. More civilized, perhaps—in certain respects, in certain pockets. But, at its core, it remained as vicious and predatory as it had ever been. Perhaps even more so.

The monk followed the abbot past the keep, through the courtyard that forked off into the Chapel of the Forty-Nine Martyrs—a single, domed chamber that was dedicated to the monks killed during a Berber raid in the year 444—and into the Church of the Holy Virgin, the monastery’s main place of worship. Mercifully, none of the other monks were there yet, but the abbot knew the solitude wouldn’t last too long.

He led the monk past the nave and into the
khurus
—the choir. As he passed the grand wooden portal that separated the two areas, his eyes drifted up to a wall painting adorning a half cupola overhead, a thousand-year-old depiction of the Annunciation that he’d seen countless times. In it, four prophets were gathered around the Holy Virgin and the archangel Gabriel. The abbot found his gaze drawn to the first prophet to the right of the Virgin, Ezekiel, and a chill crawled down his neck at the sight. And for the next hour, as he desperately prayed for guidance, he couldn’t shake the thought of the prophet’s celestial vision from his weary mind: the heavens opening up to a whirlwind of amber fire folding on itself, the wheels of fire in a sky “the color of a terrible crystal,” all of it heralding the voice of God.

They prayed, side by side, for close to an hour, facing the black, stone altar, prostrating themselves against the cold floor of the chapel in the praying tradition of the early Christians, a posture that was later adopted by Islam.

“Shouldn’t we have waited longer for him?” Ameen asked. With the sun comfortably ensconced in the eastern sky, they were now—alone—in the monastery’s small, newly restored museum. “What if something’s happened to him?”

The abbot had been concerned about that himself, and not for the first time. Still, he shrugged stoically. “He’s been up there for months. I should think he knows how to handle the mountain by now. He seems to be coping well.”

After a quiet beat, the younger monk cleared his throat and asked, “What are we going to do, Father?”

“I’m not sure what we should do,” the abbot replied. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Ameen’s eyebrows shot up with incredulity. “A miracle. That’s what’s happening.”

The abbot frowned. “Something we don’t understand is happening, yes. But from there to say it’s a miracle . . .”

“What other explanation is there?”

The abbot shook his head, lost for words.

“You said it yourself,” the younger monk persisted. “The sign you described, what you saw on the news.”

A confused tangle of images clouded the abbot’s mind. He thought back to that day, in the desert. When their guest had been found, before he took to the caves. The terrible state he was in. His recovery.

The word
miraculous
glided into his thoughts again.

“It doesn’t fit any of the prophecies of our holy book,” he finally said.

“Why does it need to?”

The comment took the abbot by surprise. “Come, Brother. Surely you don’t mean to negate the truth in those writings?”

“We’re living a miracle, Father,” Ameen exclaimed, his voice flushed with excitement. “Not reading about it hundreds of years after the fact, knowing full well it’s been translated and embellished and corrupted by countless hands. Living it. Now. In this modern day and age.” He paused, then added, pointedly, “With all the power of modern communication at our disposal.”

The abbot’s face contracted with unease. “You want people to know about this?”

“They already know about the sign. You saw the woman on the news service. Her images and words will have reached millions.”

“Yes, but . . . until we understand what exactly is happening, we can’t allow this to come out.”

Ameen spread out his hands questioningly. “Isn’t it evident, Father?”

The abbot felt cowed by his colleague’s fervent gaze, and nodded thoughtfully. He understood the younger man’s exuberance, but it needed to be reined in. There was no running away from what was happening, of that he had no doubt. He had to face it. He’d been thrust into this unwittingly, and now he needed to do what needed to be done. But with care, and caution.

“We need to study the scriptures more closely,” he concluded. “Consult with our superiors.” He paused, weighing the hardest part of the task ahead. “Most importantly, we need to go back up to the caves and talk to him. Tell him what’s happened. Perhaps he will know what to make of it.”

Ameen stepped closer. “Everything you say is reasonable, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that we can’t keep this to ourselves,” he pleaded. “We’ve received a grace from God. We owe it to Him to share it with the world. People need to know, Father. The world needs to know.”

“Not yet,” the abbot insisted, firmly. “It’s not up to us to decide.”

The younger monk’s voice rose with concern. “Forgive me, Father, but I believe you’re making a mistake. Others, many others, will undoubtedly try to claim the sign as their own. And in doing so, they will cheapen and corrupt this most sublime of messages. We live in cynical, amoral times. These charlatans will make it harder for the true voice to be heard. Our message could easily be drowned out by impostors and opportunists, irreversibly so. We can’t wait. We have to move quickly before the chaos turns this divine event into a circus.”

The abbot sat down and sighed wearily, massaging his brow with his calloused hands, feeling the room tightening in around him. The young monk’s words rang true, but he couldn’t bring himself to take that step. The consequences were too frightening to contemplate. He sat there, tongue-tied with uncertainty, staring at the stone floor while the monk hovered nearby, his steps heavy with frustration, waiting. The painting in the chapel crept back into his mind’s eye, and he thought again of Ezekiel’s vision:

Wheels of fire in a sky the color of a terrible crystal, all of it heralding the voice of God.

After a moment, the abbot looked up, a frown darkening his face. “It’s not up to us,” he repeated. “We need to consult with the councils and bring the matter to His Holiness. They will decide.”

AN
HOUR
LATER
, Brother Ameen stood in the shadows and watched from the sanctity of a dark hallway as the library’s curator stepped out of his office.

He’d failed to convince the abbot. The old man was visibly overwhelmed by what he’d seen and seemed incapable of grasping the enormity of what was happening. But the younger man wasn’t about to let that stop him.