Dead Sea Rising

by Jerry B. Jenkins

“I confess I can barely picture it finished,” Terah said.

  “Allow me to give it some perspective. You see this last image, showing all these elements—underground foundation, base, cornerstone, first level—all as one finished piece?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you think it is life-size as it is depicted?” His eyes grew with obvious expectation.

  “I rather think not, Excellency. If these are from the engineers, this must be as big as the palace itself.”

  “Do you know how tall the palace is, Terah?”

  “I am no engineer, but I would guess thirty cubits, somewhere around fifty feet.”

  “Excellent eye, my friend! Let me tell you how much larger Nimrod’s Babylonian Tower will be …”

  “Larger than the palace, already the largest structure in the realm?”

  “Much!”

  “I do love the name.”

  “Appropriate, don’t you think? Already the entire kingdom is known as the Land of Nimrod, and I cannot deny I have grown it as if I created every city with my own hands.”

  “Of course it’s appropriate. This is your empire.”

  “It is!” the king exulted. “And every foe, every pretender to the throne I have smashed!”

  The door swung open, and the old man bowed low. “At your service, my lord!”

  “I said ‘smashed,’ not ‘Shamash,’ fool!”

  And back out he went, begging forgiveness and careening through the doorway.

  The king broke all protocol by grabbing his scepter, using it as a walking stick, and marching all the way around the table to stand next to Terah. Terah began to rise, but Nimrod said, “No, sit, sit!” And with a grand gesture he indicated the last clay drawing. “That, my loyal, steadfast servant, shall rise more than eight thousand feet!”

  Terah could not speak. He mouthed, “More than a mile and a half?”

  “I am the only deity on earth bound by a physical body, Terah. This will allow me to ascend to my fellow gods.”

  Terah shook his head. “Astounding,” he said. “And your idea?”

  “Of course! What mortal could conceive of this?”

  “Not I!”

  “No, but you are going to see to its construction.”

  “My King! I am deeply honored by your trust and confidence, but I am neither engineer nor builder.”

  “I have all of those I need, friend! What I need are laborers from throughout the entire realm, ships and camels with which to transport them here, places for them to stay, food for them to eat, materials with which to create my tower. And I need someone to arbitrate when the inevitable disagreements arise between all the experts. That will be you, the one I trust above all others in the kingdom. You need not know any of the details. You are charged with seeing it gets done. Everyone will answer to you, and you will answer to me. And may the gods favor you.”

  Bursting with pride and purpose, Terah was also overwhelmed and apparently couldn’t hide his greatest fear. “What troubles you?” the king said. “I thought you would be overjoyed.”

  “Oh, I am, Highness! I just worry that I have enough years left to accomplish this massive task.”

  “Those who know these things say it can be completed in fewer than fifty years. I will grant you at least that many more years of life.”

  “You will?”

  “I can and I do,” Nimrod said, placing a hand atop Terah’s head and sending a chill down his spine. “Consider it done! May you engage this greatest of all tasks with the passion of a newlywed.”

  “Just one more question then.”

  “I’m sure there will be more than that, Terah, and I grant you this assignment so that I am required to do nothing but watch it rise. What is your question?”

  “You may have just answered it, sir. I was wondering where you would like this constructed. But if you hope to observe our progress daily—”

  “And without leaving the palace.”

  “—that gives me direction.”

  “Follow me, Terah,” the king said and led him to the other side of the palace to the portico from which he had addressed Ikuppi’s funeral procession. “I want to be able to see it from here, and no doubt you’ll want it as close to the river as possible, but not so close that the ground is too moist to support it.”

  “Brilliant idea, my King. No surprise.”

  CHAPTER 95

  NYPD Central Park Precinct Station

  Manhattan

  “Is Teodora here?” Nicole asked Wojciechowski. “I’d like to get a look at her.”

  “Was s’posed to be, but no. I was gonna interview her in here.” He opened the door to a sparse room with four chairs, two on either side of a wooden table. “You’d a been able to see and hear it all on monitors out there. Let’s sit. We gotta talk.”

  “So this is what it’s like to be a suspect,” Nicole said. “Sitting across from you in an interrogation room.”

  “I guess,” Wojciechowski said. “I like bein’ on this side a the table.” He tapped two file folders on the table and set them aside. “Time to give you guys a look at where we are. I know the clearin’ phase was tough. It always is. I never cleared two PhDs at once, ya know. I get a few MDs through here because of the senior angle, and a lotta times they are guilty. I was pretty sure you two were innocent from the beginning, but I had—”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” Nicole’s dad said.

  “—I had to follow through, Doc, you know that. I been wrong before. It’s been awhile, but it happens. Anyhoo, my gut tells me the letter and the text today would have been enough to clear you anyway.”

  “But there’s more?” Nicole said.

  “A lot more, ma’am. We got a confession from the housekeeper, Petrova.”

  “Really!” Nicole said. “You suspected her, but I never saw that coming. I doubt Mama did either.”

  “She actually confessed?” her father said. “Or did you confuse an old woman for whom English is a second lang—”

  Wojciechowski stopped him with a raised hand and pulled a photocopy from one of the files. “Don’t know how many languages you guys know. How ’bout Bulgarian?”

  “That’s more Nic’s bailiwick.”

  She shook her head. “I know a smattering of Slavic languages, but Bulgarian is tricky. It’s one of the Southern Slav tongues and—”

  “You lost me already, Doc. Just lemme say we were pretty sure we had her dead to rights. The closed-circuit TV feed showed her goin’ and comin’ Friday morning, just like your mother said. Then it shows her coming back, same afternoon. Everybody else on the video is recognized by the front desk people and security. They come, they go, no one uses the back entrance or exit.

  “We try to track her down, wanna find out what she was doin’ there that time a day, what happened, all that. Found out she stays in a tiny room with a bath upstairs in a house not far from where she goes to church.” He turned over a page in the folder. “Bulgarian Orthodox Church on West Fiftieth. We call the landlord, who says he and his wife don’t really know her. She’s quiet, no phone, minds her business, pays her rent in cash on time every time. Our guys ask if they came over to ask her a few questions would she be there. Landlord says sure, she’s upstairs now. They head over.

  “Turns out somebody screwed up and forgot to tell the landlord not to tell her we were comin’. When our guys get there, he says his wife thought it would be only courteous to let her know so she’d be dressed and everything. Next thing they know, she’s on her way out, wearin’ that big, white parka and carrying her Bible and a purse. Tells ’em she’s going to church for a few minutes but she’ll be right back.

  “Squad car heads to the church, finds some kinda assistant parish priest who says a woman fitting Petrova’s description—heavy coat and all—had been there nearly half an hour, sitting in a pew and writing on a pad of paper. He’d asked her if she needed any prayer or counsel and she just shook her head. Said she had exited through the rear of the building between five
and ten minutes before.

  “They ask him what’s out back and he says just alleys. They take a look back there, follow the alley south between buildings to Forty-ninth and see a commotion to the west, just short of Eleventh Ave. Bus sittin’ cockeyed in the street, sirens in the distance, people huddled over a body at the curb about twenty feet beyond the bus.”

  Nicole flinched. “You’re not saying …”

  “Bible wound up in the intersection of Forty-ninth and Eleventh, purse hit a building on the northeast corner. Petrova dead. If the impact didn’t kill her, her head slammin’ the pavement did. Witnesses back up the driver’s story that she was standin’ on the sidewalk on the north side of Forty-ninth and he was headed to the bus stop just past Eleventh. Says next thing he knows she takes two giant steps right in front of him. Didn’t even have time to hit the brake.”

  Nicole covered her mouth. Her dad whispered, “Awful. So she’d written her confession, is that what you’re saying?”

  “One of our guys found it in her purse. Our people translated the original and came to some conclusions, but before I show you that, see if you can make out anything from what she wrote.”

  He spun the sheet to face them and Nicole leaned close. “I don’t get the flow,” she said, “but I see words I recognize. ‘Guilty …’ ‘Sorry …’ ‘Ashamed …’ ‘Scared …’ ‘Father …’ There’s a name. ‘Dimitar.’ ‘Feel bad for Mrs. Berman.’ ‘Forgive me …’ Something about a Middle Eastern man … ‘Persian? Arab? Syrian?’ ‘Threatened family.’ And then something about Jesus. Looks like ‘receive me.’ Then ‘I believe Jesus. My name means gift of God.’ What’s it all about, Detective?”

  “We’d run her name through Interpol like we do with any foreign suspects. When she heard we were coming, she might’ve wondered if we knew. Turns out her father, long dead, was Dimitar Petrov. Don’t know how he got mixed up in it, but he was busted years ago for a Syrian arms deal. That’s more than nine hundred miles from Bulgaria, so it was probably all about money.”

  Wojciechowski pulled another document from a folder. “Here’s what our guys make of this. Bottom line, obviously somebody doesn’t want you diggin’ in Saudi Arabia.”

  “I’m getting the picture,” Nicole said. “But it’s not the Saudis, is it?”

  “Looks like a rogue agent, this Persian she talks about. She doesn’t know where he’s from, but probably because of the connection with her late dad, he threatened her family if she didn’t do this for him. She wouldn’t have had any idea why. Ben, we’re thinking he may have even gotten to your former housekeeper, paid her off to get herself fired, and made Petrova look like the perfect replacement.”

  “Which she appeared to be,” her dad said.

  “After studyin’ the CCTV, the time line, your mother’s memory, all that, our people think Petrova did this before she left in the morning. Then, maybe ’cause a her religion, she regretted it and went back to see if Virginia had survived.”

  “All this just to keep me from leading a dig in Saudi Arabia? Why? Threaten me? Attack my mother?”

  “Whoever this is,” Wojciechowski said, “what are they so afraid of? What do they think you’re gonna find?”

  “The question is how do they know what I’m looking for. Lots of people dig over there. Only Mustafa and Moshe knew.”

  “Somebody told somebody,” Wojciechowski said. “But Saudi Arabia’s way outta my jurisdiction. Anyway, you two aren’t people of interest anymore, and we can turn the rest over to Interpol.”

  “And we just fend for ourselves?” Nicole’s dad said. “Whoever this is is still out there.”

  “Oh, if he comes here, we’ll get ’em,” Wojciechowski said. “I’m just sayin’ you want Interpol on this if he’s trying to pull the strings from over there.”

  “I’m not withdrawing my app,” Nicole said.

  Her dad snorted. “They’re trying to scare the wrong family.”

  Wojciechowski returned her dad’s box to him and said, “Whatever you do, be smart. We’ll get this guy, but stay alert.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “And it looks like you don’t have to tell your wife about the box or the picture unless you want to.”

  “Yes, you do, Dad.”

  “I know I do. It’s long overdue.”

  CHAPTER 96

  Ur

  “A tower to reach the gods,” Belessunu repeated back to Terah. “And so your deceiver, the one who believes he’s assassinated your own firstborn male child, puts you in charge of a project designed for his own aggrandizement, and all is forgiven.”

  “I wouldn’t say I have forgiven him, wife. But I cannot help but feel honored and trusted.”

  “Oh, he trusts you, all right. He trusts you to fulfill his every desire. As he has obligated your next fifty years, would you care to know my plans for the next ten? I plan to so immerse our son in the work of the Lord God that when he is able I can get him to the land of his ancestors. I pray Shem remains alive long enough to tell Abram all he remembers of the great ark and all the wonders of God. I cannot imagine telling him what his father is doing for the self-proclaimed deity king who murders perceived enemies on a whim.”

  “The boy has a right to be proud of his father.”

  “His father has a responsibility to make him proud.”

  “You will not take him from here. I forbid it.”

  “You have lost your authority over me or the boy,” Belessunu said. “Would you like to know what the Lord God Almighty says?”

  “No! Spare me that!”

  “I will not. He says, ‘The earth shall suffer for its sin, for they have twisted My instructions, violated My laws, broken My eternal covenant. I will consume the earth with a curse so its people must pay a price.’”

  “I am leaving,” Terah said.

  “Listen as you go!” she said. “I will punish the gods in the heavens and the proud ruler on earth. The glory of the moon will fade and the brightness the sun will wane, My armies of heaven shall rule.”

  “Please, Belessunu, stop!”

  “You will call on your idols for wisdom and be found wanting.”

  CHAPTER 97

  Eleven West

  Monday

  “You sure you want me here for this, Dad?” Nicole said. “Seems it’s between you and Mom.”

  “I want you here,” her mother said. “Whatever this is, you ought to hear it too.”

  Her dad nodded. “I’m just sorry I never told you, Ginny. You told me about your previous relationships—”

  “Which didn’t amount to much. So this was a relationship?”

  “It was.”

  “In Vietnam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I thought I did. Well, yes, I did. And hard as it is even for me to believe, while it was deep and meaningful and special, especially at that time in my life, I can tell you honestly, even at its best it was nothing like what we have. I can’t deny we were in love, but I don’t want you to ever think it holds a candle to—”

  “I’ve never doubted your love, Ben. It just gave me pause to find that picture and wonder. And to learn she was someone so special to you, and I have never heard of or about her.”

  “That’s all on me. I regret it and I’m sorry. Sorry for not telling you. Sorry for hiding the box. Sorry for leaving it out where you could stumble onto it.”

  “Did you sleep with her, Ben?”

  “May I tell you the story from the beginning?”

  Ginny nodded, and he told her everything, leaving nothing out. It was the first time Nicole had heard how he had been wounded.

  “I never saw her, talked to her, heard from her, or wrote to her ever again. I didn’t want to see another death notice like Red’s, so I was relieved when my father told me that the proxy scholarship from the foundation had been used by Bian Nguyen at Saigon National Pedagogical University. All I know is that she graduated. I don’t know where or when or if she ever used
her teaching degree or even whether she’s dead or alive.”

  Nicole’s mother’s eyes were full. She reached for him and he took her hand. “She sounds like a wonderful woman. And so did Red. It sounds like Red helped you grow up too. Forgive me for doing the math in my head, but while Charm is our age, do you realize Red would have been nearly ninety by now? Those women helped make you the man you became, Ben, and I’m grateful for both of them.”

  “But I was lost without you,” he said.

  “Who knows how receptive you’d have been if you’d never met Charm? I’m curious enough to maybe look her up myself some day. She opened your mind, developed your heart.”

  “It shouldn’t surprise me you’d be so good about this,” he said. “Forgive me?”

  “Of course. But there had better be no more secrets.”

  “Promise.”

  That afternoon in the corridor at the hospital, Nicole called the doorman at her building and asked if he’d do her a favor.

  “Anything,” Freddie said. “You know that.”

  “When you get a minute, just see if I’ve had any packages arrive, anything too big for my mail slot.”

  “I’ll check right now. Hang on …” She heard him entering, checking with the front desk. “Just one,” he said. “Thick, padded envelope from Saudi Arabia.”

  “Freddie, could you have that messengered to me here at Sinai? Just tell them Eleven West and put it on my bill.”

  “You betcha, Doc. And how’s Mom?”

  “Better. Much better.”

  “And did the cops find there was foul play?”

  “I’ll you the whole story in a few days.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Byron Williamson, Jeana Ledbetter, and Leeanna Nelson at Worthy.

  Dr. Craig Evans, consultant extraordinaire.

  Walt Larimore, MD, friend and medical consultant.

  James Scott Bell, friend and legal consultant.

  Natalie Hanemann, deadeye editor.

  Lynn and Debbie Kaupp, indispensable assistants.

  Alex Field, agent nonpareil.

  Dianna Jenkins, my heart.

  Watch for Book 2