Exodus by J.F. Penn Page A

with Eritrea. It was the only place in the world where the Ark of the Covenant was openly claimed to be kept, and the curator’s notes had pointed in this direction. Natasha looked down on the land, pitted and scarred like the hide of a dinosaur that had died fighting. The plane lurched suddenly and nausea swept over her. She grabbed the arms of the seat.  
    “Are you okay?” Isac asked.  
    Natasha nodded but in truth she was struggling, although she wasn’t about to show it. Isac Abdel Rahim had grown up in her father’s house, the son of his most trusted bodyguard, so it was almost inevitable that he would become her own protection as the years went by. As children, they had fought each other in the yard, under the stern direction of their fathers and each had deep scars inflicted by the other. Yet Isac was the only man she truly trusted, and he had proved his loyalty repeatedly. Perhaps they felt a kinship as brother and sister, even though theirs had only ever been a relationship of violence. But how long could she keep this knowledge from him? Pregnancy wasn’t something you could hide for too long and he needed to know, so he could protect the baby as well as herself.  
    Natasha had found out for sure a week ago. She was only eight weeks pregnant, so it could still go wrong, but no one need know until she really started showing. Her breasts were larger but she was using that to her advantage, for it distracted the weak men around her. She had decided to finish this mission and then retreat with enough money to keep her for a long time. She would head to Asia, maybe Singapore, perhaps India. Countries with first-class hospitals where she would be hidden in the mass of people, the best treatment with no questions asked.  
    But did she even want to keep the baby? Natasha knew she was still struggling with that question. The father was Milan Noble, a Czech businessman, transformed into something hideous in the bone church of Kutna Hora, the curse of the Devil’s Bible made flesh. But his genetic stock was aristocratic and he had been a perfect male specimen before speaking the unholy words.  
    She had gone to Europe to learn from Milan about the Western assumption of power. In the Middle East, it was easy to take power by oppression, through fear, but Milan had a way of drawing it to himself, an innate nobility that made people want to follow him, and that was something she wanted. She used fear easily, but didn’t slip naturally into charismatic leadership. The baby would be the last piece she had of him. She shook her head at the glimmer of emotion. No, she would get rid of it as soon as this mission was finished, for it made her weak and she just couldn’t tolerate that.
    She thought of what her father would have done at the news. He would have cursed and beaten her for becoming pregnant by a westerner, a white man, not someone of royal Egyptian blood. He would have called her a whore and banished her until the child was born, for she would have become a liability, someone to protect, instead of an asset who could fight. Finding the Ark of the Covenant had been his quest, the one thing he hadn’t achieved before his death, when the shades of the people he had killed had come for him in the night. Finding the Ark would be a kind of justice, a revenge for what he had turned her into, a way to show that she had surpassed him.  
    Natasha turned her attention back to the notebook they had taken from the Museum, flicking through the pages and examining the detailed research carried out by Dr Gamal. It seemed that the Ethiopians had been amongst the earliest converts to Christianity, and the Ethiopian Coptics still remained a separate church to the rest of the Christian Orthodox world. The Kingdom of Aksum even had its own language, Ge’ez, in which the sacred texts were written. But despite the claims of possessing the Ark and the rich cultural heritage of this land, the political troubles, poverty and violence