The Book of Names

by Jill Gregory

  David rubbed his forehead. “Whereabouts in Brooklyn?” He wondered what Dean Myer would say when he informed him he had an out-of-town emergency.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A hard drizzle was slapping the pavement when David stepped out of the cab on Avenue Z in Brooklyn. He hoisted his duffel bag onto his shoulder and ran up the steps of the nondescript brownstone on the corner. After pushing the buzzer, he studied the ornate silver mezzuzah affixed to the doorframe of the B’nai Yisroel Center.

  A thin youngish man starkly dressed in a white shirt, black slacks, and a knitted black yarmulke ushered him through what David guessed had once been the front room of a private home. The brownstone had been converted into a comfortable maze of offices.

  “I’m Rabbi Tzvi Goldstein, Rabbi ben Moshe’s assistant,” he said, leading David down a hallway and into a classroom where a wide green blackboard sat perpendicular to the two long walls lined with shelves of books. David scanned their spines, noting they were all in Hebrew. The room smelled pleasantly of chalk and old leather and floor wax.

  “We’ve been studying the journal pages you faxed to Rabbi ben Moshe.” Rabbi Goldstein was smiling and seemed barely able to contain his excitement. “He is very anxious to see you.”

  Good. Maybe now I’ll get some answers, David thought.

  Lately, every time he picked up his journal, he found himself gravitating toward the page with Stacy’s new name.

  And it was making him increasingly uneasy.

  “Can I get you some tea while I let the rabbi know you’re here?”

  “No, thanks.” David shoved his hands in his pockets as the young rabbi left. He moved toward the room’s single window, where rain trickled in rivulets, blurring the view of the street below. His thoughts drifted to the images of the Iranian tanker explosion he’d seen on the airport TV while waiting for his boarding call. It seemed like the only news broadcast lately was bad news.

  He jumped as a quiet voice spoke behind him, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Shalom, David. Please, come this way. We can talk upstairs in my office.”

  David felt a twinge of surprise. He’d expected a Yiddish or Russian accent, but the elderly rabbi standing before him spoke with a faint New England intonation. His voice was creaky, somehow matching his gaunt frame. Rabbi Eliezer ben Moshe was a slight man who looked every bit as ancient and well-worn as the books on his shelves. He had a full head of faded gray hair and a silver beard that wisped in cloudlike curls to the middle of his chest. As David followed him up the carpeted stairs, he noticed how frail the rabbi appeared. His plain black suit coat hung from his bony shoulders, looking two sizes too big, as if its owner had shrunk since the time it was purchased.

  But his walnut brown eyes, as he watched David take a seat in his cramped office, were sharp with worry, curiosity, hope.

  “Did you bring your journal—and the stone?”

  So much for preliminaries. David reached into his duffel and pulled out his journal. The rabbi’s eyes lit when he set the red leather book down on the desk. As he pulled the rock from his pocket, David spotted the pages he’d faxed sitting alongside the rabbi’s computer. There were notations on them, but he couldn’t read what they said.

  The rabbi stretched out a gnarled hand for the stone, and hesitating only a moment, David placed it in the man’s palm.

  Rabbi ben Moshe stared at the smooth variegated agate, unblinking and silent. He drew in a breath and his frail chest quivered.

  “There are no facets,” he whispered.

  David watched in silence as he quickly opened a desk drawer to withdraw a magnifying glass. He turned the stone from side to side and, peering through the glass, examined it from every angle.

  Out of all that had happened, the notion that this rock—something he’d kept on his desk since he was thirteen—held any significance, was the thing that baffled him the most. But the rabbi was brushing his finger across the Hebrew lettering with such reverence, such awe, that David curbed his impatience to rush into a discussion of the names.

  “This is an ancient holy stone.” Rabbi ben Moshe glanced up and met his eyes. “See how it’s cut—rounded and shiny? The agate is polished, yet it doesn’t glimmer or reflect the light. That’s because it was cut in a convex style known as cabochon. Until the middle ages all stones were cut this way.”

  David glanced once more at the milky blue stone he’d so casually kept in the hand of the ceramic monkey.

  “You’re telling me it dates back to the Middle Ages?”

  “Oh, no. It is much older than that. It dates back thousands of years—to biblical times.”

  Biblical times. David was stunned. And skeptical. How would Crispin Mueller have gotten his hands on a biblical stone?

  “I was told it had magic powers.” David half-expected the rabbi to laugh.

  But ben Moshe nodded, holding his gaze. “And so it is written.”

  Then the rabbi closed his palm around the stone and murmured a prayer in Hebrew.

  “You are Jewish. Do you understand the Shehehiyanu prayer? I have just thanked God for allowing me to live long enough for this moment.”

  David’s spine tingled. What was he talking about? What was so special about this moment? And what did Crispin’s rock have to do with Stacy’s name being written in his journal?

  He leaned forward as the rabbi set the stone carefully down beside the journal.

  “You say it’s magical. In what way?”

  “It belongs to a very special set of twelve. You told me on the phone that you’re not religious, David, but I assume you know who Moses was.”

  David nodded. “That much I know.”

  “And his brother, Aaron—the high priest?”

  “Now you’ve lost me.” David was wondering whether he’d made a mistake in coming here. He felt he was moving further away from answers about the names, getting sidetracked with gemology and Bible study. As he struggled to contain his impatience, his gaze returned to the stone. Suddenly he remembered the reason he’d kept it in the first place—as a reminder to pause and think. He forced himself to bite back his questions about the journal and to concentrate on the rabbi’s words.

  “In the book of Exodus,” ben Moshe continued, “we read that Aaron was the first high priest, the most glorious Jewish position, and that God told Moses to make his brother three holy garments—a breastplate, an ephod, and a robe.”

  “You’ve lost me again, rabbi.” David shrugged. “Ephod?”

  “It’s another word for the linen apron Aaron wore during the holy rites. But the breastplate is what we’re concerned with.” The rabbi continued. “It was made according to instructions God gave to Moses. It was a woven square fashioned by an artist from threads of gold and blue, purple and scarlet.”

  Ben Moshe met David’s eyes and explained. “According to the Book of Exodus, whenever Aaron entered the holiest part of the Temple to pray to God, he was instructed to wear upon his heart this ‘Breastplate of Judgment,’ which contained the names of the Children of Israel—the names of the Twelve Tribes.”

  David went still. Names?

  “The names were engraved on twelve gemstones which were set in gold and sewn onto the breastplate with gold thread.”

  Suddenly David realized where this was headed. “And you’re telling me that this rock is one of those stones?” he asked, incredulous.

  The rabbi picked up the agate and came around the desk. “Look at what it says.”

  “I don’t remember much of my Hebrew.”

  Ben Moshe ignored the admission. He held the agate before David and pointed one by one to the five tiny letters, tracing them from right to left. “Nun pey tav lamed yud”, he read. “They spell out Naphtali—one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.”

  David’s mind raced. “So there was a stone for each of them?”

  “Exactly. And each stone was different. Naphtali’s was an agate—the stone of protection, the one that prevents a man from stumbling
and falling—”

  David gave a bark of laughter. “In that case, it didn’t work,” he told the rabbi. “That’s how I got this stone. The person who had it before me told me it was magic and would keep us from falling off a snow-covered roof. It didn’t.”

  The rabbi didn’t appear the least bit flummoxed. He merely looked at David with those faded brown eyes and said in a quiet tone, “Later, I must hear more about this person who had the stone. But for now, I can tell you that he didn’t understand the nature of it. This stone—as well as each of the other eleven—has a larger purpose. This stone was never meant to protect one person. It is meant to protect the Children of Israel—and the entire world. The twelve stones represent God’s mercy on His children.”

  The rabbi drew a long breath. “There’s a reason you’re here in my office today, David. It’s no accident. Just as it’s no accident that you’re in possession of the names you’ve written in your journal and also of this sacred stone.” An urgency burned in the rabbi’s eyes. “May I see the book?”

  A sense of unreality washed over David as the rabbi picked up his journal and opened it to the first page.

  This all had to be some wild coincidence. After all, the stone had only come to him by accident. . . .

  Accident.

  The same accident, he realized, leaning back dazedly, that brought him to the names.

  The stone and the names.

  Could they really be connected?

  “I believe these names belong to those people you told me you saw in your near death experience.” Ben Moshe stroked his curling beard, his voice more somber than it had been before. David felt a chill tingle up his back.

  “But who are they and why are their names always in my head?”

  “You may scoff, David, but a nonreligious person can have a mystical experience. And you have. So—there’s a mystical answer to your question. You are not the first to write these names in a book. And these are not just random names—they are special. Very special.”

  David braced himself for whatever was coming next.

  From the third floor walk-up apartment above the Java Juice coffee shop in another part of Brooklyn, a man in an Eminem t-shirt and a backward Yankees cap lowered the volume on his headphones. He’d heard enough.

  Picking up the safe phone, he hit redial while the video screens and monitors of the state-of-the-art communications center flickered all around him. This job was geek heaven. From the center of his horseshoe-shaped console, he could eavesdrop on conversations across three continents and watch history in the making, while two floors below, the caffeine addicts were lining up like lemmings to swallow flavored cups of mud.

  “What gives?” The blond hulk in the back of the bakery van parked on Avenue Z snapped the words into the phone. James Gillis was antsy, and his ass burned from sitting here waiting. This was his first opportunity as lead Dark Angel, and he was impatient to prove himself.

  “Damn it, Sanjay, how much longer do you expect us to just sit here? Shepherd’s been in there for forty minutes already.”

  “Hold on to your balls, big guy. Here’s the drill. Shepherd’s got the gemstone and the journal with him. Get them both. And after you’ve eliminated everyone, find the damned safe. We need to get whatever that old Jew has in there.”

  “No problemo.” Gillis glanced at Enrique, the Puerto Rican locksmith with his toolbelt and Glock strapped beneath his Armani blazer. Enrique sat in the captain’s chair beside him, staring at the rain splattering the van’s windows. He was always cool—as patient and expressionless as a Mafia hitman.

  In the communications center, Sanjay checked that the bank of digital recorders on his left were still blinking.

  “In that case,” he said, raising the volume and returning to the conversation in the brownstone. “Dark Angels—go. You are cleared to fly.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “These names you’ve written. . . ” The rabbi touched a hand to the pages beside his computer, the ones David had faxed him. “They match names that have been recorded in ancient papyri discovered in the Middle East.”

  David felt like the floor was sliding away beneath his chair.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Confirmation came in only this morning. Hear me out before you close your mind,” ben Moshe chided. “These names, and all those in your journal, were first written thousands of years ago—they were written down by Adam.”

  He held up a hand as David started to argue. “According to the Kabbalah, Adam copied down God’s Book of Names—the names of birds, beasts, and every living creature—for himself and for his sons. They, in turn, passed copies on to their sons, and so on, until eventually the Book reached Moses.”

  David leaped from his chair, unable to contain his incredulity a moment longer.

  “Rabbi, with all due respect, I find it impossible to believe that Adam knew my stepdaughter’s name back in the Garden of Eden.” He pulled the journal toward him and began reading random names aloud. “Or Shen Jianchao’s. Or Noelania Trias’s. Or Beverly Panagoupolos’s.” David tossed the book down. “Come on, now.”

  Ben Moshe remained unfazed. “I don’t expect you to understand this all at once. The study of Kabbalah is a lifelong journey. It requires a mature mind and many years to uncover the mystical layers of the Torah. In past centuries, its secrets were restricted, passed down only from the rabbis to their most devoted students. But, David, I have dedicated my life to this study for over sixty years and I know as well as I know my own name what I am about to tell you.”

  David suddenly flashed on his mother’s tales of her great-grandfather, the mystic, Reb Zalman. “I’m listening.”

  Ben Moshe nodded. “Follow me now—Moses’s copy of the Book of Names was passed down to him from Isaac—one of Abraham’s two sons—and was stored for years in the Temple Vault in Jerusalem. But when the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E., they carried off its treasure to Rome, and the Book of Names disappeared, along with the high priest’s breastplate. And with that breastplate,” the rabbi said softly, “went the gemstones of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.”

  David glanced at the stone on the desk, his brain roiling with questions. But he bit them back, listening as the rabbi continued in his low creaky voice.

  “The copies belonging to Abraham’s other son—Isaac’s half-brother, Ishmael—passed to the sons his concubines bore him, and those papyri were lost to the desert sands. So for centuries, all copies of the Book of Names were lost. However, in recent years, archaeologists have discovered fragments in Egypt and other places in the Middle East which they believe are copied from Ishmael’s papyri. Aided by historians and mathematicians, they’re attempting to piece them together. These are the experts I contacted to compare your pages against the various fragments safeguarded in Israel.”

  David struggled to digest the enormity of the rabbi’s theory. “Have they found more than one copy of Adam’s Book?”

  “We believe so. Papyri written in Aramaic, Coptic, and Hebrew have been discovered—”

  “I would have thought only Hebrew.”

  “No.” Ben Moshe shook his head. “Since Ishmael was Abraham’s son by his non-Jewish handmaiden, Hagar, his descendants’ copies were written in ancient Arabic languages. And although identical passages have been found in many papyri, no one has yet assembled one complete text. However,” his eyes gleamed, “some of us feel we are close.”

  David leaned forward. “So there are ongoing archaeological digs?”

  “Oh, yes.” The rabbi’s voice sharpened. “Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones searching for the missing fragments. Others are racing to assemble the entire manuscript so that they can be first to translate all the names—only these are evil people, David. Enemies of God.”

  Baffled, David dragged a hand through his hair as the rain began to thrum more rapidly against the window. “Who?”

  “The Gnoseos.”

  David looked blank. Rabbi ben Moshe w
alked around his desk, steepling his hands together at his chest. His face looked grimmer than David had yet seen it.

  “The Gnoseos are a secret society descended from an ancient religious cult—the Gnostics.”

  David stared at him. “How ancient?”

  “Predating Christianity. The Gnoseos are one of the few remnants of Gnosticism still existing—a sect even more vibrant and secretive than they were centuries ago.”

  David had heard of Gnosticism. He remembered Dillon mentioning it one Saturday when they were discussing the broader roots of religion over bagels and cream cheese.

  “Hedonists, aren’t they?” David searched his memory as thunder clapped outside. “They consider humanity to be trapped in evil bodies, right?”

  “Yes. And that every soul has the ability to tap into some innate knowledge—a ladder, as it were—in order to elevate high enough spiritually to break free of the body.”

  “And what then . . . reach heaven?”

  “Not exactly, David.” Ben Moshe sighed. “The root of their name is gnosis—the Greek word for knowledge. The Gnoseos believe that with enough knowledge they can vanquish God. And they have resolved to do precisely that.”

  David had a dozen questions, but before he could ask the first one, there was a knock at the door and Rabbi Goldstein poked in his head.

  “Rabbi, excuse me. Yael HarPaz has arrived.”

  “Good, good. Send her up, Tzvi.” Ben Moshe returned to his chair. “I hope you won’t mind, David. I’ve invited an antiquities expert to join us—a brilliant Israeli archaeologist from Safed. She arrived from Israel this morning.”

  “Look, Rabbi.” David threw up his hands. “This just gets more and more complicated. I don’t want us to get off-track. My stepdaughter’s name is in my journal, and I’m worried. If you know—please just cut to the chase and tell me why so many dead people want me to remember their names!”

  “We’re getting to it, David. Please be patient. You must begin to comprehend that you are a part of something much bigger than you can imagine. I understand you have a Ph.D. in political science and are renowned in your field. I assure you that I am as knowledgeable in my field as you are in yours. And so is Yael HarPaz in hers.”