Levin was about to grab a phone himself, but Stern grabbed his hand instead.
“Captain, we’ve found something. Swinging cameras around to the Mount, we found this on the other side of the valley, under a grove of trees, just off the Jericho Road.”
Levin remembered the truck chugging up the hill to market. Weren’t there two men sleeping on the sacks in the back?
A bitter-tasting bile rose in his throat. “Not again.” The Hawk didn’t hear the hint of fatalism in his own voice. He was moving too quickly.
Rodriguez slid on the loose gravel and nearly lost his balance. They turned away from the main path and to a much steeper path, short, leading to the corner of the entrance, but covered with loose stones. All three of them shifted the sacks to their left shoulders and reached out to the towering boulder on their right for balance and support. Rodriguez stopped to peer around the boulder, and Bohannon crashed into his back, falling awkwardly into the thick brush on his left.
“Tourist,” Bohannon growled.
“C’mon,” said Rodriguez. He turned the corner, and was gone.
Levin ignored the phone and grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Squads one and two—move, now! Squad three—cross the valley, just opposite the Golden Gate. One kilometer to the east, a farmer’s truck. Secure it. The rest, follow the path down to the tunnel. Be careful. We haven’t located them yet.”
Levin was inclined to dispatch his two reserve squads from David’s Tower to help with the worsening situation on the Temple Mount, but they were his backup: all he had in case something else went wrong.
He saw the movement at the same moment his wireless phone squawked.
“Rasaf, soldiers are converging on the entrance to the King’s Garden Temple.”
“Yes, I can see them.”
“What would you have us do?”
Rasaf thought for a moment. “Have you seen any other movement near the tunnel entrance, have any of you?”
No one answered.
Rasaf had failed to lift his finger from the transmit button. “Something is wrong here.” The words were meant for himself, not for his team. “Something is very wrong here.” He saw the transmit key depressed. “Stay alert. This doesn’t make sense.”
After Johnson helped him get up, Bohannon stepped around the boulder and joined Rodriguez at the entrance. There was a chain across the entrance with a warning sign attached, but Rodriguez had hoisted the chain, allowing Bohannon, then Johnson, then himself to get into the foyer and under cover.
“Rasaf . . . there is movement at the entrance.”
Ehud had the growing demonstration on the Temple Mount, another of the squad remained zeroed in on the truck, but Levin and Mordechai were draped all over Stern, straining to see what was happening at the King’s Garden Tunnel in the half-light of early dawn. “Kick up the resolution,” snapped Levin. “This is the worst time of day to get a clear visual.”
Stern tried to tighten the image.
“There’s movement by the entrance,” said Stern, watching dusky shadows slip into the tunnel entrance.
“Yes, but who?” Mordechai looked down at Stern. “Who is that?”
Standing on a rooftop, mostly hidden by a parapet, the Imam watched as the demonstration, apparently random, unfolded below him. He was not interested in the masses swarming the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock. The Imam was watching intently those to whom he was connected by the walkie-talkie in his hand, the fingers of demonstrators who were spilling over onto the sides of the Mount. He was following information, and so far, the information had proven to be accurate. They were down there somewhere, he was sure. They intended to destroy the Dome or the Mosque, of that he was also sure.
His cell phone rang, forcing him to put down the walkie-talkie. He knew the voice. He didn’t expect pleasantries.
“Have you heard of the Prophet’s Guard?”
“No.”
“An Egyptian group, Muslim, based in Suez City. For the last nine hundred years or more, they were the guardians of something they kept in a secure vault. Whatever it is, it is no longer there. Now, these men are out in the world, trying to retrieve what they have lost.”
A momentary pause, while the Imam sifted through the information. “And why do you tell me this?”
Leonidas allowed the question to float, unanswered, for several long moments.
“These men, the Prophet’s Guard, are the ones who killed Mahamoud and Yazeer. You can identify them by an amulet they wear—a Coptic cross intersected by a lightning bolt. Many of them are in Jerusalem at this moment.”
The call disconnected. And the Imam threw his phone onto the rooftop.
“Anwar . . . Aphek . . . come down the hill, through the crowd, and pass by the tunnel entrance. Tell me what you see.”
Rasaf felt his pockets. No more cigarettes.
Once past the chain, fear and adrenalin smacked into gear. Quickly, at a brisk trot, they crossed the main visitors’ area and stopped at an iron-gate barrier that covered the entrance to the main tunnel. All three of them dropped their sacks, untied the burlap, and pulled out their backpacks. While Johnson and Bohannon were strapping into their backpacks, Rodriguez pulled a small bolt cutter out of a side pocket and deftly snapped the lock. The bolt cutter and the snapped lock went back in the side pocket and out came another, identical lock. Johnson swung open the gate, Bohannon picked up the loose burlap sacks, and both headed down the main tunnel. Rodriguez closed the gate behind him, snapped the new lock in place, and hustled to catch up, jogging into the dark.
The sergeant and the rest of his squad had engaged their night-vision goggles. Gefen wasn’t comfortable with the goggles. He believed it restricted his range of vision. But whatever you were directly looking at was certainly clear.
Gefen held his squad in place while he peered around the boulder at the tunnel entrance. A chain stretched across the entrance, with a “No Admittance” sign. Past the chain was a visitors’ area and off the visitors’ area appeared to be side rooms—four of them. He detected no movement, no sign of anyone inside.
Twelve heavily armed, antiterrorist commandos swiftly and silently poured through the entrance in a ballet of brute force. Four peeled right without a word. Four peeled left, covering every opening. Four flared out in a crescent, dropping to one knee, across the main visitors’ area and waited for reports. “Clear One . . . Clear Two . . .” In addition to the tunnel entrance, there were three possible points of exit from the visitors’ area. Right and left had been cleared. Gefen stood and turned to his troops. Four fingers, and Gefen pointed his men toward the tunnel entrance in front of him, and the gate that was closed over it.
35
He prayed to control his fury. Here on the rooftop, without his prayer rug, he had gotten down on his knees in the spreading light of dawn and pleaded with Allah for vengeance on this Prophet’s Guard, Muslims who would kill Muslims. Just as he was about to do.
It had begun to rain. His once pure white robes, now dirty and caked with mud, no longer helped project the image of master. But he still had his voice.
“Da’ud.” His most trusted student responded immediately.
“Yes?”
“Leave the demonstration in Famy’s hands. Take two of your best men, your most trustworthy men. I am about to bestow on you a great honor.”
Rodriguez was running blind until Tom turned the blue light in his direction. It was another of the little gizmos that Winthrop Larsen had supplied. A blue-light lantern that would completely illuminate the direction in which it was pointed, but would give off no light behind. As long as they kept the blue light pointed down the tunnel, no one behind them could tell they were there. Rodriguez thought it was pretty cool when he first saw it in operation. Now, it only added to his anxiety, reminding him that others may, at that moment, be giving chase.
“Keep moving,” said Rodriguez. The other two didn’t need any encouragement. Despite the weight of their packs, the three men set off at a brisk
pace, following the tunnel deeper into the earth.
The gate was locked, but one of Gefen’s men made fast work of cutting it loose.
A locked gate did nothing to ease their concerns. Anyone could lock a gate from the inside.
Gefen motioned two men in, entered himself, and had the other two follow.
Using universal sweep techniques, Gefen’s squad moved along the tunnel. Deftly trained, they moved quickly, confidently. But there was no movement or light ahead of them, nothing unusual picked up in their night-vision goggles.
Gefen estimated they had advanced several hundred meters when they came to a junction. The current tunnel continued straight ahead, and a new tunnel opened at a ninety-degree angle to the right.
The squad converged on Gefen, waiting for orders.
They had passed the first junction without any incident, continuing straight ahead. But now they could see a second junction, and this one had five spokes breaking off from the main tunnel. They stopped cold in their tracks.
It only took a moment to decide. Gefen tapped three of his men and pointed to the right. The other man remained with him, and moved straight ahead. Gefen figured he was better than any three of his men put together, so one with him was plenty.
He held up a fist, then snapped a finger to the right. The three commandos poured around the corner without a sound. Immediately, Gefen and his companion sprinted across the junction and into the tunnel on the far side. One hundred meters into the tunnel, they skidded to a stop, their weapons at the ready.
“Aleph Center, this is Gefen. Acknowledge.”
“Gefen, this is Major Mordechai. Report.”
“Major, this is one major foul-up.”
For a moment, Mordechai wasn’t sure if it was a joke. Levin, for his part, was about to rip out Gefen’s adenoids.
“Sergeant Gefen, come again?”
“Major, my squads have got this place covered. There is a main tunnel, and about a thousand meters in, there is a junction with a second tunnel branching to the right. We have both tunnels secured.”
Mordechai looked at Levin. Clearly, something was missing.
“Sergeant Gefen, is that your entire report?” asked the major, allowing his increasing frustration to come clearly through his voice.
“Yes, sir,” said Gefen, “because there is nothing else to report. These tunnels don’t go anywhere. They just stop . . . a hundred . . . a hundred fifty meters in from the junction, the tunnels just stop. It’s a dead end. Nobody is going anywhere in here. And the rest of the place has been swept. It’s clear, it’s all clear. Yes, sir, there is nothing else to report.”
Bohannon and Rodriguez were sitting cross-legged on the floor, waiting. Earlier, Johnson had driven a climbing piton into the wall, pulled out a ball of twine, and gone off to explore each of the five forks. Now, Doc was back, carefully inspecting each of the five possible portals. It was taking him forever, and they would have long ago lost their patience. Except for one thing.
There was no noise coming from behind them. No light. No muffled thump of jogging feet.
Both of them were still perspiring, and neither one of them could resist looking back up the passageway once every few seconds. Fear was still with them, anxiety was still with them, adrenalin was still pumping. But the edge was coming off.
“One thing I don’t understand,” said Rodriguez, scratching little designs in the dirt. “Why did the Israelis make such a big deal out of finding the King’s Garden Tunnel, when it doesn’t go anywhere? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps the Office of Antiquities knows something we don’t,” Bohannon answered. “Maybe there’s more to the King’s Garden Tunnel than is obvious. But I sure am glad we took the time to check it out before piling in there with all our equipment.”
Bohannon looked back up the tunnel toward the entrance to Zechariah’s Tomb. “You’ve got to give Kallie some credit,” he said. “She’s a lot more devious than she looks.”
Rodriguez allowed his mind to slip back to yesterday—was it just yesterday? Kallie had led the team into the King’s Garden Tunnel, but it didn’t take them long to discover it was a dead end and that Zecheriah’s Tomb was the only remaining possibility for them to find a way underground. But Kallie’s mind was working overtime. She pointed out to the men that Israeli security cameras most likely had the entrance to the King’s Garden Tunnel under surveillance. If they were already on Shin Bet’s radar, someone would eventually pick them up entering the tunnel. But instead of exiting immediately, what if they didn’t come back out for hours? Where would Shin Bet look if they finally disappeared?
Rodriguez shook his head. “That’s probably where Shin Bet’s SWAT teams are at this very minute, wondering how we managed to evaporate into thin air. Hey, remind me never to play poker with that woman.”
Rodriguez heard him before he saw him. Doc Johnson came sauntering back to where they were sitting, a beatific smile stretched across his face.
“My friends, you are so fortunate to have me with you.” With a sweep of his arm, he bowed gracefully from the waist. “There is such a great value in a fine education, don’t you think?”
Rodriguez was about to hit him with a rock.
“Follow me,” said Johnson. “Not only can I lead you to Zechariah’s Tomb, but I can also lead you to the tombs of the Beni Hazir. And from there, I believe we may encounter our old friend Abiathar.”
Rodriguez looked at Bohannon. “Clearly, the adrenalin rush has gone to his head. He better recover soon, or he’s in for a big hurt.”
All three strapped on their backpacks. “By the way,” said Johnson, “when we get back, remind me to congratulate Kallie. She was right. Zechariah’s Tomb is the right way in.”
36
“Well, you tell the Antiquities Commission for me that I think they are a bunch of idiots. It’s amazing this nation still exists with such fools in positions of responsibility.”
Major Mordechai slammed the handset into the telephone receiver with such force that Levin knew he would have to order a new unit.
“Incredible stupidity, incredible,” the major moaned as he began pacing through the Aleph Center. “They didn’t think it was important. Didn’t think it was important! By all that’s holy, what’s wrong with these people?”
All Captain Levin could do was wait until the major had expended his anger and frustration. He sat on his stool, chomping on the stem of his pipe, and waited. Eventually, the major came over, leaned against a railing, and filled in the missing pieces for Levin.
“When the King’s Garden Tunnel was discovered last year, at least the entrance down by Gihon, it didn’t take much excavation for the Antiquities Commission to discover that it had hit a dead end. So, they began plotting what they expected were reasonable courses for the tunnel to follow and, at one of their possible terminus points, they found a similar tunnel entrance. But it also culminated, after a few hundred meters, in a dead end.”
“Another Hezekiah’s Tunnel?” asked Levin.
“Exactly. They figured it was begun at both ends at the same time and, like Hezekiah’s Tunnel, it would have scores of dead-end shafts. But the commission didn’t have the funds in its budget to excavate a new tunnel. So they decided to announce the King’s Garden Tunnel to the world, set up the entrance down by Gihon, and charge admission fees to tourists until they got enough money to excavate the full length of the tunnel. But they kept that information to themselves.” Mordechai just shook his head.
“Then there’s another entrance,” said Levin. “One we don’t know about.”
The major’s eyes narrowed to tiny specs. “They’ve gotten in, haven’t they?” he said. “They’ve gotten under the Mount.”
Before leaving from New York City, Johnson had spent many hours planning and mapping out how the team would approach their search under the Temple Mount.
Using all of the existing information from Warren’s digs, the Israeli Antiquities Commission, contacts
at the British Museum, and every scrap of evidence he could find on the Internet, Johnson began to compile a notebook full of Temple Mount lore—fact, fiction, and frivolity. Sifting through the available information, he also began to construct a grid of the Mount and its environs, a grid that existed both above and below the Mount.
His intention was to divide the space above and below into corresponding sectors. He then applied all of his accumulated data to the sectors. Using colors, symbols, and hunches, Johnson began to discern what he believed were the most likely sectors for where Abiathar may have erected the Third Temple. One factor was discerning where the original Temple was located. Another was trying to discern Abiathar’s point of entrance to the dark halls of the Temple Mount’s belly. Neither was certain.
Contributing to uncertainty was the fact that, like all ancient archaeological sites, the Temple Mount had grown in height over the past two thousand years, each civilization building its foundations upon the ashes of its predecessor. Like most tells in the Middle East, the slice of civilization Johnson was searching for now rested under layer upon layer of latter days.
Johnson’s problem was a three-dimensional one, not only length and width, but depth as well. In order to minimize his possibilities, Johnson slaved over his homemade grid, exercising his brain and his resources to their maximum potential.
In the midst of that exercise, Johnson had a critical revelation. The scroll must accompany them.
Throughout the chase to find the meaning of the scroll, all of them agreed that, prior to leaving for Jerusalem, they would secure the scroll in a bank’s safe deposit box. They also agreed that, just in case they didn’t return, they should leave a letter and the key to the safe deposit box with Johnson’s attorney. The scroll would be presented to the British Museum in return for a hefty contribution to the Bowery Mission.
The Sacred Cipher Page 27
