26th June
Vladimir, Angela and I sat at a table in the officers’ mess on HMS Resolution.
I took a sip of my beer.
‘Does it really need all the equipment that was at the Meadowcote bunker to control those missiles?’ I asked Vladimir.
‘There are many different things that have to happen,’ Vladimir replied. ‘A lot of processing power is needed to convince the US systems that a real order from the president has been made. Then, there has to be control of the ground based launch systems, the internal rocket systems and guidance.’
‘That means that even if you had all the relevant launch data,’ I concluded, ‘you couldn’t just take control from a laptop in a semi-detached in Waterford.’
‘No,’ Vladimir replied.
‘Why then did WAR target Sam Collins on the sixteenth of January?’ I said. ‘OK, that was the other possible date for the asteroid impact, and WAR wanted to ensure that the deflection plan was sabotaged, but Sam couldn’t have actually used the information that he had to launch the missiles.’
‘The sixteenth of January was calculated very late on,’ Angela answered. ‘We’d been gearing ourselves up for the thirteenth of September. When Tom Meadowcote realised that there was a second solution in the mathematics, the major control rooms were not ready.’
‘So sending the data anywhere would have been useless – including to Sam,’ I said.
Vladimir and Angela looked at each other.
‘We’ve never been quite sure who we could trust,’ Angela continued. ‘We now know that WAR has infiltrated the White House, Groom Lake and MI5. Even at this moment, we’re not quite sure of the route by which WAR discovered that I and the Masters of ARK were planning to be at Gobekli Tepe on the twentieth of May.’
Vladimir took up the story: ‘Because WAR infiltrators could be anywhere, we decided to create three launch bases – in case one, or two, were discovered.’
‘Meadowcote bunker and the basement of Northchester Cathedral were two of them,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Vladimir replied, ‘and we know what happened at Meadowcote.’
‘There was another base in Waterford,’ said Angela. ‘It was the only one that was operational on the sixteenth of January, so we had to use it. We only knew about that date on the previous day.’
‘Ah,’ I said to Angela, ‘that probably explains why Sam chose to contact Joan on the day he got the data.’
‘WAR may not have known the exact whereabouts of the Waterford base,’ Vladimir continued, ‘but Starcruiser One tracked the location to which the data had been sent and identified Sam. The CMW was then targeted at him and his computer in the hope that it would be enough to stop a successful launch.’
‘Where is the launch base in Waterford?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Angela replied. ‘We decided to retain some level of secrecy, even among ourselves. Only Sam and Tom knew the exact details of Waterford.’
‘How many bases are there now?’ I asked.
‘Just Northchester and HMS Resolution,’ said Vladimir. ‘Although, as far as I know, the Waterford base still exists. Tom planned to look at that option again nearer to the thirteenth of September.’
‘Did you bring the Key?’ Vladimir asked Angela, changing the subject.
Angela reached into her pocket and withdrew an item, wrapped in cloth. She laid it on the table and carefully uncovered it.
In front of us lay a stone carving, identical to the four-legged, lizard-like creature depicted at Gobekli Tepe. It was about two hundred millimetres long by forty millimetres wide by forty millimetres deep and had a metallic block of roughly the same dimensions attached to its base.
‘That’s the Key from the Ark of the Covenant,’ I said, remembering Helen’s account of her and Etienne’s conversation with Bishop Julian Summerland in the bishop’s hotel room at Sanliurfa.
‘It’s a very curious artefact,’ said Angela. ‘Analysis of the metal base indicated a tungsten alloy that couldn’t have been made until the twentieth century. I would have said that it was a modern fake,’ she continued. ‘It wouldn’t have been hard for someone to place it in the Ark in Aksum, Ethiopia. I don’t think it was very difficult for Waterside, Cornerway and Rio to access that Ark.’
‘What makes you think there might be something more to it then?’ I asked Angela.
She rolled up her right sleeve to her elbow to reveal her tattoo of the four-legged, lizard-like creature. It was undoubtedly the same image as that on the Key and on the pillar at Gobekli Tepe.
‘This has been the symbol of Arkangel since ARK was formed in 1532,’ Angela explained. ‘The site at Gobekli Tepe wasn’t excavated until the twentieth century, so how did the founders of ARK know about this image?’
‘You think because that connection needs further explanation,’ I inferred, ‘then the coincidence of the Key depicting the same creature might have greater significance.’
‘Just so,’ Angela replied.
‘What happened to the Ark,’ I asked. ‘I remember Helen saying that Waterside, Cornerway and Rio had taken the original and replaced it with a fake.’
‘It’s hidden within a crypt at Wimborne Minster in Dorset,’ Angela replied.
‘May I pick up the Key?’ I asked.
‘Please do,’ Angela answered.
I lifted the artefact above the table, but the metallic base was surprisingly slippery and I accidently dropped it back onto the table.
‘Oops, sorry,’ I said.
Angela and Vladimir did not reply. Their attention was immediately drawn to the metallic base of the Key which had slightly rotated in relation to the carved stone above it.
Angela picked up the Key and rotated the base further until it was hinged at right angles to the stone. She replaced it on the table, and all three of us peered into the hollow chamber that was visible within the metallic base.
The chamber contained a white powder.
I was then aware of myself looking more and more closely at the lizard carving – as if I was zooming-in with a video camera.
The colour of the creature changed from that of yellow-grey sandstone, through all the colours of the rainbow – colours more vivid than I ever recalled seeing.
Then slowly, the legs of the creature began to move. It began to cross the table, getting bigger and bigger with each step, until it was towering above me and looking down upon me.
It opened its enormous mouth as if intending to swallow me.
Then, the creature spoke: ‘Swan! … Swan, Swan,’ it kept repeating.
I had a sensation of lying on my back, just staring at the amazing, multi-coloured face of the lizard.
The face then gradually grew smaller and smaller, and it finally morphed into an image of Helen.