by Fritz Galt
Hebrew class had been required of her in Park Forest, Illinois. But Park Forest was not a natural incubator for budding linguists. Hebrew wasn’t spoken in her family except for ceremonial blessings over candles, wine and braided bread on Friday nights. Her ear was more attuned to English and the occasional Yiddish expression. Perhaps as a result, reading other languages came more naturally to her than speaking them.
Spanish came smoothly, but not as easily. Then in college, Maya and Cuneiform scripts brought out her talent for other writing systems. To say she was a linguist was an understatement. That was a job title based on her formal training. In fact, she was born to unlock the mysterious scribbling of lost cultures.
Yet, she was still tongue-tied before others and preferred the solitude of her lab.
She had gone to bed thinking about the Torah she had known in synagogue. The precious scroll was identical in content to every other Torah in every other synagogue and research library around the world. But since it was kept in a special ark and taken out only for chanting specific passages, it was a religious relic. It was holy.
She was always impressed by how carefully the curtain was pulled back to reveal the ark. Then the robed rabbi would gently open the scroll like a physician performing brain surgery. His thick glasses reminded her of the fine resolution of a magnifying glass.
As she was learning the script, she learned the stories told by Moses in the Torah. In Hebrew class, she learned how the five books were lessons in how life was to be lived. Only in college, after she fully mastered the language, did she appreciate how much the Torah, the source of the law, governed every aspect of her experience, from the synagogue and community to her life.
Years later when she questioned the validity of the lessons, she would remember the precious and lovely quiet of Saturday mornings and the power of the stories.
Trying to sleep that night, she could only think of the fabled parchment sitting in the safe at work. In that cold, metal box was a segment of the original Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Ezra-Nehemiah. Dean had brought her a fragment of the most important part, pages from the Book of Genesis.
A scribe in Tiberias had penned those letters and selected which stories to include. The pages were priceless, historic, pure gold for the Hebrew scholar. And nightmare scenarios had played out in her imagination the whole night.
Fellow employees opening her safe and taking it. A flood or fire ruining the building. Light fading the ink to the color of the parchment. A friend with a cigarette casually flicking a burning ash onto the parchment and setting it ablaze.
Her mind was flooded with details about the Aleppo Codex. It was a book about history, that changed history, and remarkably survived history.
The Ben Asher family of Hebrew scribes lived along the Sea of Galilee from the seventh to tenth centuries. They passed on the craft of reproducing ancient texts, including their pronunciation and meanings, from generation to generation. The most prolific and renowned of these was Aaron Ben Asher, whose life’s work was to faithfully reproduce and annotate the texts of the past into a single volume of bound pages.
With the meticulousness of a photocopy machine and attention to graphic design, beauty, historical accuracy, grammatical interpretation and pronunciation, he created a version of the Bible that became the basis for all subsequent Hebrew Bibles, and the backbone of the Hebrew language.
Yet the story of the codex had only begun. One hundred years after its completion, it was purchased by a Jewish community in Jerusalem where it remained until the Fall of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The synagogue where it was held was plundered and the Crusaders transported the codex to Egypt, where it was ransomed back to Jews.
It was kept in Cairo for several hundred years, until a Jew brought it to Aleppo. There it was placed in a synagogue built over Elijah’s Cave. For over five hundred years, it was kept from public view. The Jewish community allowed only the occasional distinguished visitor a glance at it over that time. An inscription written in the book read that “blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled forever.” Under the rule of the Ottoman Turks and then the French and Syrians, the Jews of Aleppo managed to preserve their treasure and their own security.
When the age of photography arrived, visitors asked to photograph the codex. Only the occasional page was reproduced in this way.
In December of 1947, the United Nations voted to carve a new state of Israel out of a land formerly known as Palestine, then under British rule. Arab mobs reacted to the injustice to Palestinians by ransacking synagogues wherever they could. The synagogue in Aleppo came under attack and the vault was opened. The codex was hauled onto the floor and the synagogue was set on fire.
After the riots, the Jews of Aleppo, as in many other parts of the Arab world went underground. They could only go about their lives if they kept a low profile and practiced their religion in secret.
Many thought that the codex had been destroyed in the fire, but it was not. Eleven years after the formation of Israel, a Jewish man from Aleppo managed to smuggle remains of the codex to Israel, reportedly inside a washing machine. It was one of the finds of the century. A thousand-year-old book, The Crown, the foundation of modern Judaism had survived.
Only half of the 493 pages were left. Something had happened to the rest, including all the pages of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Had they been lost in the fire?
Many assumed that to be the case until 1981 when a woman living in New York City sent an entire page of Chronicles to the Israeli government. How had she obtained it? She claimed that her aunt had sent it to her by mail years before, and the aunt’s sister had retrieved it from the synagogue after the fire. The entire page was intact.
Scholars in Jerusalem looked anew at the codex. Indeed, the parchment was not blackened by fire, rather by a type of fungus. Calls went out from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to find the remaining pages of the codex.
Grudgingly, an elderly immigrant to Brooklyn produced a scrap of paper from his wallet. He had carried it around for years, having picked it up off the floor of the synagogue shortly after the building had been destroyed. It turned out to be an actual fragment of Exodus, including the part where Moses asked the Pharaoh to “Let my people go.”
Hopes rose for more finds. But intensive sleuthing yielded no results, and the trail went cold.
Until Dean Wells walked into her lab with five complete pages of Genesis. How much more of the work still waited to be discovered?
Fluorescent bulbs flickered on overhead. She rushed over to her desk and knelt to open the safe.
She punched in the combination and held her breath. The door swung open and there it was. The ancient parchment had survived the night.
Chapter 9
Carla breezed to work in her open-top, clear flame yellow Smart Car. She had shared the previous evening with a college friend, Jody, who was still trying to hook her up after all those years.
Jody had resumed the role of shrink that she had played at UVa. “What you need is a radical change in your life,” Jody had said over a glass of Chardonnay.
Carla had looked around the antique interior of the Dupont Circle restaurant and shrugged. “Why change my life?” To her, she had it all.
“Girlfriend,” Jody said. “How can you be a psychologist when you don’t even know yourself?”
“What’s wrong with me?” Carla inquired, and stared into her wine glass.
“Look at you. You’re the most pent up, neurotic loner with the most pathetic, programmed life I’ve ever seen. Move to New Orleans. Do something extravagant before it’s too late. Get out and live.”
Carla had failed to see the point of her friend’s intervention. Maybe Jody didn’t appreciate the interesting job, the fun car and funky digs she had. As long as she was surrounded by paintings of big flowers, had evenings free to
catch the latest foreign flicks and could eat ravioli with Italian bread and olive oil, she was happy.
“Just look at me. I’m the picture of contentment.”
Jody had leaned back to take in the view from a broader perspective. “What’s missing is a man. You’re going to be thirty before you know it and all these other chicks around here will be married to millionaires while you rot away. You’ll be lucky if some fifty-year-old accountant bothers to stop and pick up your hanky.”
Carla stared at her friend. Did Jody really see her that way? “If I have to resort to hanky-dropping, I’m counting myself out of the race.”
“What race? You’re still in the race?”
“Of course.” Carla found it strange to sound so defensive. But it made some sense. “I’m in the race.” She shrugged, but it didn’t sound convincing. She might be in the race, but she wasn’t running very hard and certainly wasn’t at the front of the pack.
At a nearby table, a woman emitted a bubbly laugh and thrust her chest out over her plate. Several men turned to look.
“I believe in the game theory approach to picking up men,” Carla said. “We all stand a chance, just like in A Beautiful Man.”
Her friend cracked up.
“What did I say?”
When she finally regained her composure, Jody simply said, “That’s all right. You don’t need a man. You need Sigmund Freud.”
Only as she steered into her normal space in the CIA’s parking lot and set the handbrake, did Carla realize what she had said. She had meant to say A Beautiful Mind, not Man.
She slumped over the steering wheel and couldn’t stop her shoulders from convulsing with laughter.
“Carla? Is that you?”
It was a deep male voice filled with concern.
He approached cautiously. “Is everything all right?”
The convertible roof was still open and she must have looked like a loon. She turned and revealed a toothy smile with a beet-red face.
Who was that silhouetted in the sun? She stuck her sunglasses into her hair.
What was his name? Chuck something.
It was the fellow accused of shooting the Palestinian.
He stopped short when he saw her grin. “Sorry. Just thought you needed help.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I was having a moment.”
He nodded. “I have those sometimes.”
She pushed a button and the car’s roof began to close.
When she finally opened her door, she was surprised to see him still standing there. “Dean. Right?” She batted down her wind-blown hair. She had always wondered what undercover spooks did at the office. “So where are you headed?”
“To see Rachel in the Language Department.”
Oh. “Learning a new language?”
He shook his head and pointed to the car keys dangling from her hand. “Don’t you lock your car?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Not usually. Especially not here.” She looked around the headquarters of America’s chief intelligence service. “Do you lock your car here?”
He looked up sheepishly. “Yeah, I reckon I do.”
They walked together to the front entrance.
“So, who’s Rachel?” she asked.
He looked at her as if for the first time. “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
She wasn’t jealous of anything, but found herself blushing.
He bit his lower lip, perhaps to stifle a smile or to impress the moment in his memory.
“Rachel is a colleague.”
She stared straight ahead.
He stopped before sliding his identity card over a glass sensor. “You have nothing to worry about.” He placed a hand on top of hers. “I promise.”
The touch was warm and comforting, and she felt a tingle.
He pushed through the turnstile and turned toward the Language Department. His stride was purposeful. His shoulders looked stronger than she had remembered.
She swiped her badge and bumped through the turnstile.
Chapter 10
Rachel donned a lab coat and latex gloves, then locked the door and turned out the lights. A second switch illuminated three red lights, simulating a darkroom. Now, to read the codex.
She bent down and removed the tray from the safe. It gave a hollow ring when she set it on a worktable.
She had covered the manuscript with foil to prevent light from leaking in. She removed the foil from the codex pages and set it aside. There they sat, fully intact. She lifted the parchment out of the tray, page by page, and spread the five pages out on the table.
Then she turned to the low-light camera that she had obtained from the surveillance lab. It was small and lightweight.
She lined up a shot of the first page and pressed the shutter button. A soundless snap told her that the image was captured. There was no screen on the camera, and she had no way of knowing if the picture was exposed correctly. She would know soon.
Then she turned the delicate parchment over and photographed the text on the back. It took ten minutes to capture all the pages on film. Satisfied, she slipped the camera into her pocket.
Gently, she fit the pages back in the tray and sealed them with the foil. She put the tray into the safe and shut it. She waited for the locking mechanism to finish whirring. The pages were safe again.
She removed her gloves and switched to the normal lights.
She attached the camera to her laptop and watched the pictures download. They copied in swift succession and she deleted the images on the camera.
The exposure needed no adjustment. The camera had worked perfectly. Those geeks in the technical services department were good.
Finally, she was able to read the text. Her Hebrew came back easily, though she needed to sound out many of the names and places. The phrasing was awkward, the terms archaic, but such obstacles only made her feel closer to the past.
Part of the puzzle was putting the ten images in sequence. At last she had the pages arranged in what looked like the original order.
She typed a few words from the first page into an online, searchable Bible. Moments later, she had an exact match, book, chapter and verse. Then she typed in text from the last page. It appeared that the pages were from Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
So what was Dean Wells looking for? He needed to know a destination. There were several regions named, but he wanted to know what was on the first page. She flipped to the first image in the sequence. There was a passage describing the end of Abraham’s life.
She opened a text editor and typed in a rough translation as she read:
These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life, one hundred and seventy-five years.
Then Abraham gave up the spirit, and died at a good old age, an old man, and full; and was gathered to his people.
His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, near Mamre in the field of Ephron, son of Zohar the Hittite.
This was the field Abraham had purchased from the Hittites, where he had buried his wife Sarah.
The location was clear. The page cited Abraham’s gravesite.
A quick search of the Internet revealed that the grave was known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Not only were Abraham and Sarah buried there, but their son Isaac and grandson Jacob and their wives as well.
She heard a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
The doorknob rattled. It was still locked.
She took a few steps to open the door.
Dean Wells stood there smiling.
“I’ve found what you’re looking for,” she said in her breathy voice, and pushed away a strand of hair.
At the laptop, she read from the page. “It’s called the Tomb of the Patriarchs.”
“That’s pretty specific. I can be there by tomorrow.”
“But do you know where it is?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s in Hebron.”
When she hea
rd the name, all she could think of were police and military checkpoints, angry mobs, dirt-poor refugees and economic sanctions. “That’s the West Bank.”
“I know.”
The guy seemed gung-ho to go. Maybe her Jewish upbringing made her cringe. Maybe it was the fact that only the most die-hard Jews dared go there. Some built heavily fortified settlements, further provoking Palestinian anger.
Either he was naïve, or he was incredibly brave. She wasn’t sure which.
“Well, keep safe.”
“I intend to.”
He was looking around the lab.
“Where’s The Crown?”
She pointed to her safe where the codex was secure. “Given its value, I thought it best to keep it locked up.”
“Do you think it’s worth something? And if so, who owns it?”
She shrugged. “I’d have to call in an authority to verify that it’s real.”
Just then, she saw a young man in the doorway. How long had he been standing there? He cleared his throat.
“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”
He was tall and lean with black-rimmed glasses. He approached with a muscular stride.
“Barry Wiseman,” he said.
He held out a hand, and Rachel shook it, introducing herself and Dean.
But Barry’s attention was directed at her. “I couldn’t help but overhear. A minute ago, you were talking about a crown.”
She studied the guy. Who did this schlemiel think he was, barging in? She had known several Barrys in her lifetime, and this one was no different: slick, underhanded and, she had to admit, usually right.
“Suppose you tell me who you are,” she said.
“Fair enough.” He stood close to her and stared down his nose. She could hear the hairs inside it being sucked in.
Meanwhile, Dean headed for the door.
“Don’t leave so fast.” There was a note of desperation in her voice.
“Gotta go,” Dean said.
What a schmuck.
Why was her Yiddish coming back all of a sudden? It was like finding her true voice.
