The Golden City by John Twelve Hawks Page B

car, slamming the door shut. All three men stayed silent for the rest of the journey. The Egyptian driver seemed to realize that his passengers had argued.He kept glancing at Linden as if the Frenchman was about to explode.
    The road followed a dry riverbed up a canyon. They passed through one guard post, and then another. The final checkpoint was run by a bored group of police officers who were sipping tea and smoking from a hookah. Tour buses were parked a hundred yards up the road; they had their engines on and their air conditioners running.
    “Most of the tourists come here at two o’clock in the morning to climb Mount Sinai,” the driver explained. “If they’re too fat to walk, the Bedouin carry them up the trail on camels.”
    The monastery guesthouse was a complex of white buildings with a terrace shaded with Italian cypress and olive trees. The guesthouse manager checked them in while a teenage boy with a crippled leg carried their luggage to their rooms. The flushed-face tourists who had just returned from their climb were sitting on the terrace next to the guestroom gift shop and restaurant.
    “Go to the church and look for the hidden chapel,” Linden told Gabriel and Simon. “I will talk to the abbot and see if I can establish a financial rapport.”
    As Gabriel and Simon followed a stone walkway up to the monastery, they could see two Bedouins helping an elderly man off a camel while tourists hiked down a switchback trail. “Many years ago, my brother climbed this mountain,” Simon said. “There were Bedouin all the way up, selling bottled water and candy bars. The price gets higher the closer you get to the Holy Chapel.”
    The monastery had been built like a fort to defend the monks from desert raiders. A rectangular wall made of massive sandstone blocks encircled the church and all you could see from the walkway was the top of a bell tower. After paying admission, Gabriel and Simon entered through a small door cut into the wall. St Catherine’s Church was at the center of a courtyard surrounded by three levelsof monastery offices and dormitories. The gap between these monastery rooms and the church itself was quite small—about twenty feet on the western half of the church and less than eight feet on the opposite side.
    Different groups of tourists squeezed into this gap while their guides shouted at them in various languages. Most of the women wore tank tops and Capri pants, and for modesty’s sake they had covered their heads and bare shoulders with gauzy scarves. While Simon inspected the outside of the church, Gabriel followed the crowd to the north end of the court. There was a bush growing there—supposedly the descendant of the original flaming bush—and the tourists pushed and shoved each other to grab souvenir leaves.
    Simon touched Gabriel’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “No sign of the chapel. The church itself is 40 meters wide and 120 meters long. Let us see what it looks like inside.”
    They passed through two sets of doors and entered the church. Frayed carpets covered the marble floor and muffled their footsteps. The bright desert sky disappeared and the only light came from oil lamps and candleholders hanging from chains attached to the blue-green ceiling. The most striking feature of the church was an elaborate gold and silver screen between the public area and the altar. A monk wearing black robes stood in front of the screen and hissed at anyone who tried to take a photograph.
    Gabriel and Simon inspected a reliquary for St. Catherine that held a section of her leg; it looked like an old chicken bone found in the backyard. Then Simon paced out the interior dimensions of the church while Gabriel sat in one of the wooden pews. A massive brass chandelier hung overhead, and he realized that it was in the shape of a dragon. Icons of saints and martyrs covered the walls. They stared at him with large black eyes and Gabriel felt like he was being judged by some heavenly