Mullaney watched the car pull away from the entrance. God, help them, please. And keep them safe.
Parker stood just inside the front door. Mullaney was beginning to read her fairly well. Now there was worry. Not fear, but anxiety surrounded her like fog on a London morning.
“Walk with me?” asked Parker.
Before Mullaney could answer, Parker had turned on her heel and started toward the back of the residence. He had to step quickly to catch up with her.
“Brian … what do you think is going on?” Parker said as they walked through the reception hall. She headed for the french doors to the flagstone patio that spanned the back of the entire house and led to the expansive gardens that looked out over the Mediterranean. “I mean … what have we gotten ourselves into? Ever since Dad got that box … prophecies and curses and people out to kill us to get that box back. And now this—the most dangerous kabbalah warning this rabbi has ever seen? Something that nearly gave him a heart attack? And”—she stopped on a dime and spun to face him, their bodies almost colliding—“what about all this Messiah stuff?” she said, just inches from his face. “Dad’s been talking about Jesus’s return since I was a little girl. I don’t know what to make of it all. But … I’m frightened … frightened by all of it. Brian, what … where are we?”
He knew Parker’s strength, but Mullaney could see the gestation of tears and fears in Parker’s eyes. Over her shoulder he spied two chairs, shaded by a palm tree. “Here … let’s sit down.”
In the few moments it took to get settled, Mullaney tried to bring his own thoughts into order. He faced Parker head on. “I’ll add something to your list,” said Mullaney. “Does the danger surrounding the box and the prophecy have any connection to the announcement of a sudden and implausible peace treaty between the Arabs and the Jews? One of the embassy staff heard it’s called the Ishmael Covenant. An interesting name in the light of biblical history. Can this covenant and the Gaon’s prophecies be connected in some way?”
Mullaney rested his elbows on his knees and leaned in closer, keeping his voice low.
“I’m beginning to think it might all be somewhat connected,” he said. “I’m far from an expert on these things, but I know the Bible says something about Israel getting involved with a peace treaty as part of the last days. I don’t know how that squares with the idea of Messiah’s or Jesus’s return, depending on your faith, but there’s an awful lot going on—apparently random things that are all beginning to run together. My gut intuition and my reading of the Bible makes me wonder. Perhaps it’s not all random. Perhaps all that we’re involved with and all that’s happening around us are part of some master plan. God’s master plan. Maybe we are in …”
“Don’t you dare say it!” snapped Parker. “I’m feeling shaky enough already. If … if … what do we do? Brian, what does Dad do? How can we be safe—ever be safe—if we’re staring down the end of the world?”
Ankara
July 20, 10:46 a.m.
The specter-like form of Assan levitated across the stone tile, no evidence of his feet touching the floor beneath his motionless black robes. He came to a halt beside a high, angled table where the Turk was examining a leather-bound book with thick, brittle pages. The Turk, to prove a point, allowed Assan to wait while he turned to the next page and surveyed an ancient map of Jerusalem from the time of the Byzantine Empire.
It always gave the Turk a rush of pleasure to exercise power. Even over someone as weak as Assan.
“Yes?”
Assan bowed. “There has been activity at the residence,” he said. “The ambassador has left with his security detail for the embassy. He was carrying the leather satchel with him.”
“He did not try to conceal the bag?”
“No, Master,” said Assan, a smirk of contempt tinting his words.
“Soon after, a vendor’s truck pulled up to the back entry, one who sells commercial bottled water. The driver delivered ten crates of the twenty-liter plastic bottles. He left with an old, fairly dented, dispensing device for the large water bottles. Rolled it into his delivery van using a hand truck. It must have been heavy.”
Assan hesitated.
“What else?” inquired the Turk.
“Sometime after the delivery truck departed, an automobile arrived with three rabbis. They remained in the residence for quite some time. When the three rabbis left the residence,” said Assan, “two were struggling to carry what looked to be a small coffin. The shape was right, but it was obscured, covered, by an Israeli flag. The guards at the door saluted when the coffin passed.”
Tapping one of his long fingernails on the open page of the book, the Turk nodded. “They think us fools? Who do we have at the residence?”
“Two watchers … one in front, one in back.”
“What did they do?” asked the Turk, a threat lingering behind the question.
“One stayed on watch. One followed the rabbis,” said Assan triumphantly. “We know where we can find the ambassador. And the water delivery … our men thought it too obvious.”
The Turk nodded. “And what of the rabbis?”
“The automobile drove to Jerusalem, to the Hurva Synagogue. We have confirmed one of them to be the chief rabbi of the Rabbinate Council. The small coffin, still wrapped in the flag, was carried into the synagogue.”
The Turk looked up from the book. Assan’s eyes were downcast, directed toward the stone floor. “The Hurva? Yes. That makes sense … descendants of the Gaon’s disciples. You did well.”
“Thank you, Master. And now the box is within our grasp,” said Assan. “It is ours to take.”
“Perhaps,” said the Turk, closing the book. “If we wanted to possess the box.” He turned and stared hard at the top of Assan’s bald head. “And perhaps you forget your place? Is it for you to determine what steps we should take?”
The Turk was gratified to see a shiver of fear ripple across Assan’s bowed shoulders. Assan bent over even farther, the upper part of his body now parallel to the floor.
“Forgive me, Excellency.” The words trembled across Assan’s lips. “It was not my intention. I—”
“Enough,” snapped the Turk. “The two disciples who escaped to Ashkelon … where are they?”
“South of Ramallah, near the major intersection, equidistant between Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem” said Assan. His legs were shaking as much as his voice. “Waiting for your instructions, Excellency.”
The Turk eased himself off the stool. His movements were fluid and languid like a snake coming awake in the sun. He lowered his head and whispered into Assan’s ear.
“Very well, my obedient one,” he hissed. “Perhaps now we can remove the threat of that box and its message destroying our plans and thwart the Gaon’s intentions, once and for all time.”
In the dungeon-like basement, bathed in red heat, slathered with the reek of decay, the Turk bowed before the yellow eyes.
“We believe,” said the Turk, “the box has been transferred to the synagogue of the Lithuanian in Jerusalem.”
“Very well,” slithered the voice. “That the message now resides in the Jews’ house will suit our plans. Send an order to the Disciples. Obliterate the Hurva, destroy it completely, and everything that is in it … the synagogue, this box of plague, and the prophecy of power that hides within it. We must destroy the Lithuanian’s message—his warning and the secret he obtained that could once again thwart all our designs.”
There was a swelling of barbed malice in the silence. “You … must.”
35
Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem
July 20, 11:24 a.m.
Fourteen members of the rabbinate were gathered around the roughly hewn wooden table in a locked basement room of the Hurva Synagogue. In the middle of the table rested the wooden box Rabbi Herzog had acquired from the ambassador’s residence. Standing at the midpoint of the table, his hands held above the box, Rabbi Herzog began chanting in Hebrew. “The Lord our God,
the Lord is One.” The other thirteen rabbis answered in unison with the same words, repeated over and over as Herzog lifted the lid of the wooden box and pulled away the purple velvet covering.
While the rabbis surrounding Herzog began chanting in words that were not Hebrew but Aramaic … incantations of the ancient rite of kabbalah … Herzog and the other chief rabbi spoke to each other in hushed tones.
“It was the Tree of Life symbol that stopped me,” said Herzog. “The double mezuzah is a stern warning. But then I looked more closely at the Hamsa and the Tree of Life and my blood froze. I’ve read a lot about these symbols, particularly pounded into metal. Some are warnings, some are promises, some are deadly. I’ve never read of any as powerful as this. Let’s pray that this ritual can open the way for us to safely access what is inside the box.”
Herzog and his counterpart rabbi took hyssop branches, dipped them in a basin of ram’s blood and sprinkled the blood over the top of the metal box. They dipped the hyssop branches in the blood a second time and then a third time, sprinkling the blood over the box each time. After the third sprinkling, Herzog and the other chief rabbi joined in the Aramaic chanting of the other dozen rabbis.
With the finality of a casket lid slamming shut, the chanting stopped.
Herzog picked up the still bloody pelt of ram’s wool. Grasping the wooly outside, Herzog laid the bloody inside of the pelt on the top of the metal box. He pushed the pelt down along the sides of the box and covered it on all sides except its bottom.
He looked at the other chief rabbi. They knew the Aaronic blessing was effective in protecting the guardian’s life if he touched the metal box. They were not as confident that this kabbalistic ritual would protect them, or any of the other twelve rabbis, if … when … they tried to open the box.
“The Gaon would have intended that the rabbinate be capable of opening the box to discover what is inside,” said the other chief rabbi.
“Yes, he would,” said Herzog. “But still …”
Herzog took a deep breath. “Only one way to find out.” Halting once, just above the surface of the wool, he placed his hands on the wool along the top ridge of the box. Using his thumbs on the two corners of the top, Herzog hesitantly exerted upward pressure on the lid. It didn’t budge. With a sideways glance at his colleague, Herzog pressed upward on the lid with more pressure. He felt the metal give … then a pop as the lid cleared from the rest of the box. Without taking his hands from the wool, or allowing the ram’s pelt to lose connection with the box, Herzog eased the lid backward.
The front edge of the ram’s pelt still covered the opening between the lid and the box. With a glance to the gathering of rabbis, Herzog began reciting a prayer of protection, the other rabbis following suit. And then he peeked into the shadows inside of the box.
The Cardo, Jerusalem
July 20, 11:38 a.m.
They stayed in the shadows under the remnant of roof as they moved through the Cardo in the blistering midday heat. Now a series of full and partial Roman columns, excavated twenty feet below the surface of Habad Street in Jerusalem, the Cardo was, in Roman and Byzantine times, the main market street of Jerusalem. Running from north to south, the original Cardo stretched from the Damascus Gate in the north to the Zion Gate in the south and was twenty-two meters wide. In the second century, shoppers would jostle past goats and sheep in the crowded Cardo market, visiting the shops of spice merchants or metal workers, trying to remain in the shade of the overhanging roof and out of the desert sun that baked the center of the street.
The columns and a replicated section of half the roof were all that remained of the Roman Cardo, no longer a wide thoroughfare that split the Old City in two but now only ruined remains that were a magnet for tourists.
Their heads covered and their faces obscured by battered, wide-brimmed hats, the two men looked like workers on a dig—their dark pants dirty and covered in dust, their laborer’s shirts stained with sweat and soil. The Turk had told them this would be their way in. Other workers, other excavators had been there before them. They needed to look the part.
One wore a backpack and led the way. The other tilted slightly to the left, compensating for the heavy canvas bag he lugged in his right hand. They crossed the Cardo area that was once a market and slipped under an archway that led them back under the street level. They stopped at an iron gate that blocked any advance. The leader pointed to the chain and padlock securing the gate, then turned back toward the columns, blocking the other man from view as he withdrew a compact set of bolt cutters from the canvas bag and made quick work of the chain, pushing open the iron gate.
Once through the gate, closing it behind them, the men walked along the underground street, past shuttered shops that provided fake antiquities and useless souvenirs to some of the two million tourists who annually overran the Old City of Jerusalem. They had less than two hours to accomplish their mission, when the shops would reopen and their escape would be compromised. At the opposite end of the passage was a locked, heavy wooden door under a limestone arch. Stopping at the door, the man with the canvas bag withdrew a black, pencil-sized shape and inserted it—instead of a key—into the large lock.
The two men stepped away from the door, pressing against the wall on either side. With the push of a button, the pencil shape erupted with a short burst of blinding light, a stream of sizzling sparks falling onto the cobblestones of the passageway. When the sparks subsided, the leader pulled against an iron ring fastened to the door. It resisted, then snapped open, screeching on rusty hinges. Without a look behind them, the two men slipped inside and shut the wooden door behind them.
The two men played the intense beams of their Mini Maglites over the rubble and mountains of building materials that were scattered across the area in front of them. They were now in an area being excavated and constructed by a quasi-governmental agency with broad powers and limited oversight, the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter. This was one of several projects the company had underway in the Old City of Jerusalem … reconstruction of a Byzantine underground passageway that stretched between the Cardo and the Hurva Synagogue, through a second-century archway that was uncovered in 2011.
Across a broad, open room, a wooden ladder was propped against a hole in the wall. The hole had been punched through the limestone wall that, for centuries, had sealed the Byzantine archway and hidden the tunnel that snaked beneath Jerusalem’s streets to the foundation of the new Hurva Synagogue. The original Hurva, constructed in the eighteenth century, was twice destroyed and rebuilt, the new synagogue resting on the foundation stones of the earlier buildings. This new Hurva was finally dedicated in 2010. All memory of the tunnel from the Cardo to the Hurva had been buried under the rubble of centuries.
The leader held the beam of his Maglite on the ladder. Once up the ladder, through the hole, and down a tight, twisting passageway, they would be positioned under the Hurva.
Hefting the heavy canvas bag, the other man navigated around the piles of materials and approached the bottom of the ladder.
I hope we brought enough.
36
Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem
July 20, 11:40 a.m.
The paper was thick, heavy vellum. Its edges were roughly cut, as if it had been ripped from its source. Herzog had stuck pins into each of the corners, holding the vellum in place. It sat on a piece of black velvet, tacked to a wooden board. Around Herzog, the other members of the Rabbinate Council leaned in as close as possible without pushing against Herzog’s shoulders.
“The Gaon was well-versed in Torah codes,” said Herzog’s colleague. “Our challenge now is to determine which of the codes was used for this document.”
“But what is this at the bottom?” asked Herzog. “Certainly not Torah code. And these two lines of symbols … what could they signify?”
“I don’t know, Israel. But let’s examine the message first. Perhaps the code from the Gaon’s first message will giv
e us the key.”
US Embassy, Tel Aviv
July 20, 12:15 p.m.
Normal business at the US embassy had come to a standstill a few minutes before noon—a pause in life that was repeated in homes, schools, businesses, and government offices across the Middle East.
Except for the security details, nearly all the staff of the US Mission to Israel were in the cafeteria, huddled around a flat screen TV as events that would redeem the past, bring upheaval to the present, and profoundly alter the future unfolded in Amman, Jordan.
Ambassador Joseph Atticus Cleveland sat at a table near the front, some of his key staff at the same table, others scattered among the rest of the embassy’s personnel. Cleveland wanted to be with his people and not sequestered in his office. This moment was life changing, particularly for those who served their country overseas in the diplomatic corps. He wanted his team to draw strength from his calm demeanor in the face of rampant uncertainty. Very soon, he would need them all … at the top of their game.
They were watching the international transmission of CNN, which showed a large formal meeting room, ornately decorated. The room was dominated by a long, elliptical table. Along the far side of the table sat ten men. Nine of them were the rulers or leaders of Middle Eastern countries—six in elegant, ornate versions of the traditional Arab dress of kaftan and keffiyeh and three in expensive, hand-made Western suits. The tenth man was the head of the Palestinian Authority, soon to be leader of the nation of Palestine.
The CNN transmission regularly shifted to different perspectives, at times showing the entire group, at other times focusing on the speaker … or the reactions of those listening to the speaker. At the moment, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was wrapping up the opening statements made by each of the nine participants.
Ishmael Covenant Page 32
