The covenant was fulfilled, as told in the books of our ancestors. King David built a city upon Abraham’s rock, and there his son Solomon erected a temple to honor Yahweh. In the Sanctuary, the Testimony was placed, for it was the heart of a new empire. There was peace and rejoicing throughout Zion.
The great empires to the south and to the east and to the north did look upon Israel with lust, for God’s blessing came with great fortune and prosperity.
Many kings did come after Solomon, though none as wise. The Israelites had forgotten their promise to Yahweh and Israel became weak. From over the mountains came armies that surrounded the walls of Jerusalem and threatened to lay siege. Thinking God had forgotten his children, the kings of Israel bowed down not before the Testimony, but before their enemies.
And so the righteous sons of Aaron who guarded the Testimony prepared for the day when Israel’s most sacred shrine would be plundered. The great prophet Isaiah counseled King Hezekiah, telling him, “The time will surely come when everything in your palace and all that your fathers have stored up until this day will be carried off to Babylon.” He then told the king that God had ordered a safe place to be built for the Testimony. For if it was lost, so too the Israelites would perish. So Hezekiah followed God’s will.
The kingdom of Babylon did rise up like a lion to devour Israel. They laid waste to the city and took away the many treasures from the temple. But when they entered the Innermost Sanctuary they found it empty.
As this is written, many more kings and empires have come and gone and a new temple is rising high above Abraham’s rock. But the Idumean king Herod the Great builds it not in humility to God, but to honor vanity and pride. So too the priests blaspheme God by straying from His laws. Therefore its grand Sanctuary will remain empty. For to restore the Testimony, Israel must once again turn to God, disavow false idols, and see that it is not Rome that oppresses them, but faithlessness.
As Moses spoke the Testimony to the Israelites who knelt before the false idol, I too bring a message of hope for all children of God, for a new covenant will be made. Those who seek the light will be enlightened. And as Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son to God, so too a new sacrifice in blood will be offered upon Mount Moriah.
For this, the unbelievers will make a great mockery of me. They will gather against me. They will pierce my flesh and hang me from a tree. Fear not, for the flesh will be sacrificed so that the eternal spark may live on. Only then will I be given back to God to prepare the way for His eternal Kingdom.
Hear now that Israel will then perish, its idolatrous temple laid to ruin, and those who do not fall to the sword will be scattered. Many will lay claim to Abraham’s altar before the glorious temple rises up again, many lifetimes from now. You will know when that day comes, for my broken body will be reclaimed from beneath the sacred rock as a sign that a new covenant will be made.
Look not for the Testimony here, for Onias and the Sons of Aaron have brought it to a more righteous place in the land where the Israelites had once been captives. Forty days after God shakes the land of Zion shall it be brought and set upon Abraham’s rock.
Then the spirit of the Son of Man will descend upon the Chosen One to restore the Testimony.
The disbelievers will heed not the signs put forth before them. Thus a great battle will follow between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. But fear not, O Israel, for out of the ashes, the sheep will lie with the wolf and all peoples in all lands will look in wonder upon Zion and praise God.
Letting out a prolonged breath, Amit was speechless.
“If that’s what those scrolls said”—Jules had to get up and pace in a circle—“sounds to me like they were written by—”
“Jesus,” Amit said.
“Do you know what this means?” she rhetorically asked. “The implications? My God, this is the find of the century!”
“Was the find of the century, Jules,” he reminded her.
Her enthusiasm immediately shrank.
“Obviously someone doesn’t want this to be made public.” And more and more Rabbi Aaron Cohen fit the bill.
“But why? It’s tremendous.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, I’m not sure that you’re quite getting it right,” he said. “This is a prophecy, Jules. A prophecy triggered by the discovery of Jesus’s bones beneath the Temple Mount. And all this talk of the Testimony . . .” He shook his head.
She wasn’t hearing him. “So what do you think the rabbi wants out of this?”
A much clearer picture was forming in Amit’s mind now. And it was a terrifying proposition. When he looked over at the Shrine of the Book’s white dome, a final puzzle piece snapped into place in his mind. “Let me show you,” he said, getting to his feet and waving for her to follow.
47
******
Mediterranean Sea 38Ú N, 19Ú E
Charlotte’s consciousness was a patchy haze, her senses tuning in and out in wild disarray.
Smells came first—spicy, pleasant. Cumin? Cloves? Maybe an exotic Middle Eastern dish. Strange.
Sounds came next—muffled, distant. Then sharper. Voices—maybe two, maybe five. It all seemed to blend together so that only their pitch created any distinction between them. But certainly men. A blaring whine came and went through her head, loud enough to make her wince. Then the voices became clearer. They were speaking in a foreign tongue. Definitely no romance language. Yiddish, maybe?
No sight. This scared her at first, until she could feel her eyelashes sweeping against the blindfold wrapped over her eyes. There was no hope of removing it, because her wrists were pulled tight behind her back with some kind of strap. And when she tried to move her left ankle, she felt resistance there too. Her leg had been tied to something.
She felt like she could vomit.
Then the numbness in her arms and legs began to give way to sharp pins and needles. Twisting cramps came next—neck, shoulders, back, hands . . . It took all of her power not to scream out. As she squirmed to ease the pain, the reclined leather seat she’d been propped in groaned.
She froze.
The voices went on.
There was definitely a sense of motion—smooth coasting. The way the sounds resonated around her, it certainly was too big to be a car. A bus was a possibility. Then a brief interval of turbulence dispelled any guesswork. The seat belt indicator chimed briefly overhead. More bumps, rougher this time.
The voices were laughing now. One of the men was taking a ribbing, probably because he was overreacting to the bumpy flight.
Then the pain ripped up her spine and circled up the back of her head, making her moan loud enough for them to hear.
The voices stopped. There came a brief exchange that she knew was something along the lines of:
“You do it.”
“I already checked on her. It’s your turn.”
One of them let out a tired groan and she could hear his heavy feet thumping along the cabin floor.
She tried her best to pretend she was still out. But she could feel him close, leaning over her, his warm breath reeking of scotch. The smell of metal came up into her nostrils too. She felt a large hand cup her breast and squeeze.
“Get off me!” she screamed, recoiling from his touch—more pain exploded along her shoulders.
The laughing intensified.
“Sounds like she needs more drugs,” another voice called over.
Then the blindfold was stripped away.
Charlotte’s eyes squinted against the cabin’s bright lights. When everything came into focus, she saw the tall man from Phoenix, his complexion clammy (except for the blotchy, blistered burns below his chin where Evan’s coffee had left its mark), his tearing eyes glazed red. And his left arm was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, the hand immobile and blue. It was a grotesque sight.
“See what your friend did to me?” he slurred.
Donovan! What had they done to him? Then Charlotte’s stomach revolted and she r
etched violently.
“Bitch!” the man cursed furiously, just before jabbing a syringe into her thigh.
“Good night,” was the last thing she heard.
48
******
Jerusalem
Once past security, the rabbi stormed in hobbled strides across the Western Wall Plaza toward the blazing white work lights that lit up the entry to the Western Wall Tunnel. He tried his best to be cordial to the teenage IDF soldiers guarding the entrance, but because of their incompetence he now had another mess to clean up.
Past the pallets of stone and portable cement mixers, he trounced down the stairs and cut through the massive subterranean visitors’ hall without giving it a cursory glance. His eyes were locked on the security door up ahead.
At the door, he grumbled as he swept his key card through the reader to free the lock. What good was such a useless protocol now?
Through the narrow channel running along the Temple Mount’s foundation he came to the group of men huddled outside Warren’s Gate.
“What happened?” Cohen yelled before he’d even reached them.
The men separated and fell back, revealing the subject they’d surrounded—a young man, hands tied behind his back, on his knees. One of the men maintained his hold on a handgun pressed firmly behind the man’s ear.
“How did he get through?”
“He had a key,” one of the men replied. “An ID badge too.” He handed both to the rabbi.
“Eleazar Golan,” he read from the authentic ID. Cohen squared off in front of the intruder, arms folded across his chest, glaring down at the top of his head. “Look at me,” he said.
No response.
The man holding the gun grabbed a fistful of Ali’s hair and jerked his head back so that the green eyes had no choice but to see the rabbi. Deep red blotches on the Palestinian’s cheekbones were already darkening to blue, and his nose was bloodied and bent sharply to the right. His left eyebrow was split in half by a ragged gash oozing blood as thick as oil.
“You look Israeli, I’ll give you that,” Cohen said. “Very deceptive indeed.”
“He went inside,” the gunman informed him, pointing to the breach in the Temple Mount foundation. “Saw everything. It wasn’t until I spotted him making a phone call that we figured it out.”
Rage flushed over Cohen. “Give me his phone.”
The man passed it to him.
Immediately the rabbi huffed. He could tell by its cheap design that it was of the prepaid variety, most likely bought on a street corner for cash. His slim fingers adroitly navigated its simple menu to find any stored numbers. As expected, it was empty. Then he hunted for the last outward call—no doubt a second drone—and hit a green button to patch the number through. Someone picked up within two rings, but no reply came. On the other end, a muezzin’s chant swirled in the background. Cohen summoned his best Arabic and offered “As-salaam alaikum.”
The call immediately disconnected.
Cohen smashed the phone against the wall. Then he bent at the waist and pressed his face close to the Muslim’s. “Whatever your real name is,” he hissed with teeth bared, “it will die with you today. No honor will come to your family because of what you’ve done here, I assure you. And for you, there will be no garden paradise on the other side, no rivers of honey, no virgins to pleasure you.”
The Palestinian’s green eyes boiled with hatred—a pulverizing stare. “Allahu Akbar,” he proclaimed. Then he spat on Cohen’s shoes.
“God is indeed great. However, though your words may honor him, your deeds mock Him. Blasphemy!”
And in Leviticus, the prescription for blasphemy was clearly written.
Cohen straightened, went over to a nearby wheelbarrow heaped with debris, and palmed a jagged rock. He stepped aside, told the gunman to remain where he was, and signaled to the others to come forth. Eleven more men came in turn, each taking up a formidable stone.
Crouching before Ali, Cohen held the rock tauntingly, turning it over in his palm. The Arab trembled, and it pleased him. “ ‘And he that blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death; and all the
congregation shall certainly stone him.’ ”
The eleven men fanned out around the Palestinian.
The gunman backed away, still aiming the gun at Ali.
The Muslim bowed his head and began to loudly pray in Arabic. Tilting his chin up, Cohen held out the stone in his right hand, paused
. . . then brought his left hand down upon it as a sign to commence the
execution.
The first stone flew through the air and struck bluntly, tearing open the
scalp. Ali teetered severely but remained on his knees, his chant pressing
on in an unrecognizable garble.
Four more stones pummeled the Palestinian, peeling the flesh and
hair clean back from the skull, dropping him to the ground. The prayer
abruptly ceased; the green eyes rolled back into their sockets, so that only
twitching white orbs were visible. Froth bubbled from his lips. Another six stones pulverized his face—the nose flattened, the cheekbones mashed, the jaw snapped inward. Teeth clattered out across the
ground.
Cohen handed the twelfth stone to the gunman, who now stood with
the pistol lowered.
The final bludgeoning strike brought forth brain matter in globules. “Throw the body into the cistern,” Cohen instructed the men. “Then
prepare with haste,” he said, pointing to the breach. “For the time is
upon us.”
49
******
Jerusalem
Since the Shrine of the Book housed the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from Qumran, it was Amit’s home away from home. Thus the IA A had granted him his own key, thanks in part to the clout of his late friend, Jozsef Dayan.
Unlocking the glass entry door, he urged Jules into the dim space beyond—a corridor designed to invoke the feeling of spelunking through a cave. Coming in behind her, he led the way to the main gallery, which had been constructed in 1965. American architects Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos had designed the Shrine of the Book’s domelike roof to resemble the lid of one of the clay jars in which the ancient scrolls had been stored. Inside, the ceiling rose in concentric coils to a central oculus, lit by a gentle amber light.
Directly below the dome, an elevated platform commanded the center of the circular exhibition hall. There, a meticulous reproduction of the great Isaiah Scroll was displayed in an illuminated glass case that wrapped around a huge podium resembling a scroll handle. Other display cases spread along the room’s circumference featured additional scroll reproductions.
Amit had studied many of the originals, which were stored in an airtight safe beneath the gallery.
“It’s just over here,” Amit said, moving quickly along the looping ambulatory.
He stopped in front of a curved glass display case where faux vellums were laid against a black backdrop, top-lit by dim lights.
“This scroll came from Qumran, Cave Eleven,” he told Jules. “It’s called the Temple Scroll. Nineteen parchments totaling just over eight meters in length. The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See the characters there? That’s Assyrian square script.” He pointed to the scribe’s writings, inked just below horizontal guidelines cut superficially into the parchment with a stylus.
She nodded.
“This was written by an Essene.”
“A follower of Jesus,” Jules proudly replied in a show of solidarity.
He smiled. “The Temple Scroll speaks about a revelation made by God through Moses. God basically explains what the true temple should look like—explicit dimensions, precise layout, how it is to be decorated, you name it. And its design is much grander than what Solomon or Herod built.”
“So what should it have looked like?”
He pointed up to a placard hanging in shadow above the ca
se.
“See there?”
She moved closer, squinting to make out the details.
“The gray area is the Temple Mount that exists today,” he said. “The outermost square would be the footprint of the new and improved Temple Mount—a fivefold expansion to about eighty hectares that would virtually swallow Jerusalem’s Old City and connect the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives.”
This was tough for Jules to envision, since at fourteen hectares of surface area, the Temple Mount was already a massive construct, even by modern standards. “That’s a mighty ambitious building project.”
“ ccording to the Temple Scroll, that’s what God specifically commanded. And of course you’ll notice where the temple sanctuary must reside.”
The Sacred Blood Page 20
