The Sacred Cipher

by Terry Brennan

  It took another five years before Meborak, the legitimate Nagid, ruler of the Jews in Egypt, and Abiathar, ruler of the Jews in Jerusalem, wielded enough power and influence to remove this usurper from office. In gratitude, Abiathar penned a “Megillah” (or scroll) detailing the turbulent events of his reign, his rise and fall and reinstatement. This was sent to Meborak Ha-Nagid in Egypt for safekeeping. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem to which the exiles returned was scarred, having long ago fallen into disrepair, and was now dilapidated. The Fatimid government had little interest in the city, concentrating instead on the important coastal cities and their harbors. A very small retinue of Fatimid soldiers was left to guard the walled city.

  For ten years, the Jerusalemite Jews lived and worked freely, occasionally contending with their Muslim neighbors, many of whom preferred the extremist Seljuks to the more liberal Fatimids. During this time, Abiathar remained in close correspondence with leaders of the Jewish communities in Constantinople, Damascus, and Egypt and was one of the first to identify a new threat growing in the West.

  Constantinople’s emperor was calling to Europe for help. The Byzantine emperor was frustrated by the constant onslaught of Muslim invasion and by the Egyptian government’s hostility to, and harassment of Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Both the pope and the emperor were beating the drums of war.

  As an army of Christian crusaders crossed west toward Constantinople, the Egyptians failed to reinforce Jerusalem. When the crusaders finally marched on the Holy City, they met only minor resistance from a small, badly armed retinue of guards and soldiers.

  Now, with the Christian takeover of Jerusalem imminent, anticipating his fate and the fate of all “unbelievers” once the crusaders breached Jerusalem’s defenses, Abiathar again implemented his plans to escape the city with his followers, as his father had done before him. Abiathar’s plan was the same, to find refuge in one of the fortified coastal towns and wait for a safer moment to return to Palestine.

  It wasn’t long before the crusaders swept into Jerusalem, riding a wave of butchery, killing every Muslim and Jew in the city—along with an uncounted number of fellow Christians.

  The European conquerors established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and reigned for 159 years. Abiathar, meanwhile, vanished from the annals of history. There is no record of Abiathar or any exiled Jews from Jerusalem entering Aker, Tyre, or any other fortified Muslim coastal city . . . and in those times, the arrival of a band of Jews from Jerusalem would most certainly have been recorded.

  Over the span of time, Abiathar is wiped both from the pages of history and from the memory of the Jews. His name is not only obscured; it is forgotten. It is shocking to discover that a man of his ancestry, importance, and education disappeared without a trace after the fall of Jerusalem.

  ***

  Sorry, but that’s all I have for now. I am totally fascinated by this Abiathar character, and I intend to continue searching for any further evidence of his life after the crusader invasion. This is going to make a great thesis! Thank you for handing me something original.

  And Sammy, you may have been reluctant to ask, but I forgave you a long time ago for making that move on me. You were a great friend then, and I hope you will continue to be a great friend now. I’ve missed you, and I’ve got so much to share with you. But that will wait for another time.

  New York . . . Jerusalem . . . wherever, I hope to see you soon.

  Kallie

  “Do I read this right?” Rodriguez asked. “Is Kallie saying that Abiathar was the head man of the Jewish community in Jerusalem when the crusaders first captured the city in 1099? Our Abiathar? This is the same guy?”

  Rizzo wriggled happily, clapping his hands together. “Yessiree . . . that’s our guy,” he hummed gleefully. “‘We got the motive, which is murder and we got the body, which is dead!’”

  Rodriguez looked blankly at the little man opposite him.

  “Rod Stieger—you know? In the Heat of the Night?” Rizzo watched, but the blank look remained. “What did you do with your youth, Rodriguez? Yes, he’s our guy! The author of that crazy scroll was Abiathar, leader of Jerusalem’s Jewish community over a thousand years ago. Isn’t that great? Now we can really get someplace.”

  “Not so fast, Sammy.” Rodriguez’s voice was heavy and resigned as he rested his forehead in both palms, his elbows atop his disaster of a desk. “If that scroll is from the leader of the Jews to somebody else, why was it written in a language that had been extinct for nearly six hundred years? Why wasn’t it written in Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic? No, it still doesn’t make sense. What does Abiathar know about a language that represented the spoken word in Egypt one thousand years before he was born? No, Sammy, Abiathar may be the author, but we’re no closer to understanding this message than when we found it.

  “And I’m getting a bigger headache. I’m going home.”

  13

  Two days later, the band of four sat in Dr. Johnson’s apartment on Central Park West, soaking up the warmth of well-aged brandy and finely brewed, hazelnut coffee.

  “Hey, Joe,” Rizzo said over his snifter, “I renounce my claim on your office. I’ll just allow Dr. Johnson to bequeath me this apartment. I could force myself to live here.”

  Mellowed both from the fine dinner Johnson had prepared and the hypnotic effects of the brandy, Bohannon glanced around the study. Beautifully preserved, leather-bound books occupied a majority of the study’s bookcases and competed with mementos memorializing Johnson’s many overseas adventures. Now, this is the guy I expected to meet.

  Johnson’s apartment—stunning to the others who lived in typically cramped New York City apartments—boasted twelve huge rooms with soaring ceilings. There was a Victorian opulence in the design of each room: hand-carved wooden moldings framing each fireplace, each doorway, each set of windows; pocket doors and leaded, stained-glass windows, lamp shades and ornamentals; custom-made stone columns and floors, treasure after neck-turning treasure. In addition to some stunning, original oil paintings that strategically adorned the walls, and the seemingly haphazard placing of priceless antiques, perhaps the rarest and most beautiful vision was available on the twenty-foot wide terrace that ran the length of the sixteenth-floor apartment and directly overlooked a sprawling vista of Central Park.

  Tucked into a sumptuous leather club chair, Bohannon wondered how Johnson had come to reside in an apartment that could only, in the superhot real estate market of Manhattan, be afforded by multimillionaires.

  “It’s not mine,” Johnson said, so startling Bohannon that he had to grab his glass with both hands. “My elderly aunt owns this apartment. Her husband worked closely with George Eastman in developing the process for mass producing roll photographic film. He became one of the officers of the Kodak Company that Eastman launched, acquired thousands of shares of Kodak stock for pennies, cashed out at their peak, and was still filthy rich after he bought this apartment for cash many years ago. My aunt is now ninety-four, living in the most opulent assisted-living facility you’ve ever seen, and keeping me guessing about her future plans for this more-than-adequate home.”

  Bohannon caught Johnson looking directly at him and understood the unspoken message . . . no, this apartment was not purchased with the proceeds from looting a museum or selling forgeries like Randall Swinton. Bohannon could feel the burning in his cheeks as they reddened, a physiological reaction that he had never learned to control.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Doc, breaking the stupor and sitting up in his chair, “what do we know, and what do we do next?”

  Bohannon seized the moment and automatically slipped into reporter mode. “We know the scroll is a message, sent by Abiathar, Gaon of Jerusalem. We know, with fair certainty, that the message was likely dispatched prior to 1099 when the crusaders captured Jerusalem and butchered its inhabitants. That the message is written in Demotic, a language that is unknown and was extinct hundreds of years before Abiathar was born. We know that the message
was written in twenty-one vertical lines, grouped together in sets of three to form seven columns of Demotic script, and that there is no other existing example of Demotic being written in vertical, rather than horizontal, lines. So, we also know that the message is most likely in code and that understanding it will not require translating the Demotic but will require a cipher to unlock the code.

  “That message is obviously important, and we know that Charles Spurgeon must have found a way to understand the message since he warned Klopsch about its contents. Spurgeon urged Klopsch to contact Dr. Schwartzman at Trinity Parish, and Schwartzman was a close friend of composer Edward Elgar, who was fascinated with codes, ciphers, riddles, and other forms of puzzles. We know that 110 years ago, Elgar sent a letter to Miss Dora Penny with a cipher that has never been broken, that Miss Penny’s father, Alfred, was rector of St. Peter’s church in Wolverhampton, and that Alfred was acquainted with Dr. Schwartzman, a fellow Anglican priest from America. Dr. Schwartzman traveled with Elgar to California on one of Elgar’s rare concert tours, thus there was an overlapping relationship between Elgar, the Penny family, and Schwartzman.

  “And we know there was, or is, a group of men here in New York City, ready to kill, willing to die to prevent us from uncovering the truth of the scroll,” said Bohannon.

  “Maybe we should call the cops,” Rodriguez suggested.

  “Hey, Joe—you getting senile?” snapped Rizzo, sloshing the brandy high along the sides of his snifter. “We call in the cops, and one thing is certain. We’ll be out of the code-breaking business in a New York minute. I think we just keep our eyes open and a roll of quarters in our fists. That’s what I know—lethal hands. What do you think, Tom?”

  Foreboding failed to dampen Bohannon’s enthusiasm for the chase.

  “I think that Sammy Rizzo has terrible taste in clothes,” Bohannon said, stifling a grin.

  Bohannon watched as Rizzo looked down at his black, Hawaiian shirt with yellow palm trees, the red-and-green-plaid Bermuda shorts, and his pink, hi-top Converse sneakers. Rizzo seemed perplexed as the others chuckled behind their snifters.

  “And we also know that no one will believe anything about what we have here.” Bohannon’s voice sounded more calm than he felt. “I, for one, will be looking over my shoulder at every corner, but we can’t stop now.” The rest of the team nodded.

  “Come on, now, what else do we know?” said Johnson. “That was a great summary, Tom, but it was only a summary of what we now know conclusively. Look under the surface; search for a crack or a connection; what else do we know? The answer has been before our eyes. It must have been. Or Spurgeon had access to something we don’t.”

  Sitting up suddenly, Rodriguez got their attention. “Well, one thing we can be pretty sure of is that the Penny family and, therefore, Elgar and Schwartzman would have known about Spurgeon, the most renowned Christian preacher in England. And that Spurgeon would likely have heard of Elgar, who was extremely popular the last decade of the nineteenth century. They were famous contemporaries in a close-knit society. Spurgeon probably knew all about the Dorabella Cipher since it was the rage of England. You know, I—”

  Rodriguez suddenly jumped out of his chair, holding fast to his brandy.

  “Doc,” he said with an infectious urgency, “where’s your computer?”

  Johnson half turned and pointed to a corner, “It’s over there, behind—”

  Rodriguez was already flinging open a pair of three-paneled oak doors, revealing a well-equipped media center.

  “Quick, your password,” Rodriguez flipped over his shoulder as he fired up the computer.

  “First you’ll get my password, then you’ll get my bank account,” said Johnson. “I don’t—”

  “Yo, Doc, c’mon all ready,” Rodriguez complained. “I’ve got an idea, and you’re just slowing things down.”

  “Rosetta Setter,” Johnson spelled out, “but you could be more civil.”

  “Yeah, yeah, maybe some other time,” said Rodriguez, hunched over the keys. “But not . . .” The printer punched out a page.

  Rodriguez stood up, gazing down at the paper in his hand. “Holy Christmas,” Rodriguez said, turning to his partners. “Will you look at this? Holy Christmas! It’s the Dorabella Cipher. It’s three lines.”

  “Of course it is,” said Johnson, dismissing it with a backhanded flip of his hand, “but the lines are horizontal. That can’t help us.”

  “You’re right,” said Rodriguez, a tone of triumph in his voice, “until you turn it on its side—like this. Then,” he said, holding the sheet in front of their faces, “then, the lines are vertical, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but—” Bohannon started, but Rodriguez cut him off.

  “Look, it’s logical to conclude that Spurgeon, Elgar, the Penny family—they were all in the same social strata, all churchmen, all in the public eye, and with homes less than one hundred miles apart. It’s logical to conclude that they not only knew of each other, but certainly could have known each other. Doc, Schwartzman didn’t know the key, Schwartzman was the key. He was the link, the common denominator between Spurgeon, Elgar, and the Penny family. Schwartzman was social, outgoing, a climber in society. What did Spurgeon’s letter say of Schwartzman? ‘An able ally for your vital pursuit.’ There’s no one else Klopsch could have contacted who would have provided the connection between Spurgeon, Elgar, and the Penny family. Schwartzman brought them together. He was the key.”

  By now, Rodriguez was pacing back and forth in front of the large bookcases, from windows to fireplace and back again, his left hand wrapped in the thick, black hair curling behind his ear, while the other three stood, propped against chair or table, taking in his train of thought. “Spurgeon didn’t know squat about Demotic, wouldn’t have mattered anyway. So, how did he know what was in the message? But . . . but . . . Elgar was perhaps the preeminent cryptographer of his time. Would it not have been logical for Spurgeon to have at least shared this strange document with Elgar, a man who named his first major orchestral work The Enigma Variations? Spurgeon had an ancient document that was absolutely baffling, more so if he had shown it to any linguists, who would have been as stumped as he was. Who else would he turn to?”

  Rodriguez took a breath but kept pacing. Into the quiet, Bohannon slipped an unsettling question. “But Joe, even if Spurgeon did show it to Elgar, what good would that do? The scroll was written eight hundred years before Spurgeon and Elgar lived. Even if Abiathar used Demotic as a code and not a language, what good would the Dorabella Cipher be to us now, trying to unlock this scroll? They were written eight hundred years apart.”

  “You are making one critical, but erroneous, assumption,” said Johnson, crossing the floor to Rodriguez and requesting the sheet of paper. “You’re assuming the eight hundred years separating the two documents negates any possible connection.”

  Johnson turned to Rizzo and Bohannon and, with Rodriguez in his wake, stepped over to an elaborate side table bearing a Tiffany lamp. Johnson opened a drawer in the table, withdrew another sheet of paper, and held them both under the light.

  “Imagine, for a moment,” said Johnson, “that Elgar composed the Dorabella Cipher after he saw Spurgeon’s scroll. What if this Dorabella Cipher is a result of Elgar’s introduction to, or involvement with, Spurgeon’s scroll? What if,” Johnson said with a note of awe, “Elgar helped Spurgeon crack the code of the scroll, and then used the scroll’s code as the basis for writing the Dorabella Cipher?

  “Here, look at these two sheets of paper. On the left is the Demotic alphabet. On the right, the Dorabella Cipher. What do you see?” asked Johnson.

  Looking over Johnson’s shoulder, Bohannon nearly fainted, his blood rushed so abruptly to his head. The first Demotic letter looked like two lowercase c’s, turned backward. The second letter was one lower-case c—the exact same building blocks Elgar had used in creating the Dorabella Cipher.

  Quiet reverence thickly filled the room. Bohannon felt a lump i
n his throat, an incalculable hope in his heart, and a reluctance to break the spell.

  “YAAAHHHOOOOO!” Rizzo split the silence at the top of his lungs. Looking like a crazed leprechaun who had just discovered his pot of gold, Rizzo began leaping and dancing about the room with an uninhibited abandon. The golden palm trees, swaying and leaping in time to the wacky plaid shorts, precipitated a sudden burst of common hysteria.

  Johnson grabbed the brandy bottle, took a deep swig, passed it on, and joyously joined Rizzo in his wild gyrations. Soon, hidden behind the sedate walls of the Upper West Side, all four of these reserved professionals were whooping and hollering; leaping and dancing around the elegant confines of Johnson’s study.

  “If my aunt walks in now,” said Johnson, catching his breath, “I’ll be disowned.”

  “YAAAHHHOOOOO!” screamed Rizzo, and the four of them launched again, crazy men in a lunatic asylum who knew they had just discovered the key to freedom.

  Tomorrow, they would discover what the key unlocked.

  14

  Midafternoon the next day, Friday, the four men climbed the ladder that now led to the scaffold and gathered in Klopsch’s office. Rodriguez rolled out the cushioned, protective covering and turned on the strong, overhead lamps while Bohannon entered the combination and opened the huge safe. It had been a pretty simple decision to leave the scroll in the safekeeping of Klopsch’s office and the massive vault. If it had been safe there for one hundred years, it would likely be safe there for a few more weeks.