“What are you saying?” asked Erin. “That no one’s ever been down here before?”
“Not since the Romans sacked the city,” said Natasha. “We’ve always assumed these tunnels were here, but no one ever found the way in. Don’t forget, twenty centuries of construction, destruction, and more construction—the entire Old City of Jerusalem—lies right above us.”
Another buzz of excitement rippled through the trio, but they didn’t have time to waste. They’d have company again soon.
“Jon, call Ken,” said Erin. “We need backup fast.”
“I tried,” he said. “I can’t get a signal.”
“Check again,” Erin insisted. “We can’t hold them by ourselves.”
Bennett pulled the phone from his pocket and powered it up. Still no signal. They had to split up, he decided. The best odds they had were by dividing their forces, luring their enemies into the tunnels, and taking them out one by one.
“Then we’d better hurry,” Natasha urged.
They could already hear the men working their way down the shaft behind them.
Bennett took the lead. “Erin, you go left. Natasha, you go right. I’ll take the middle tunnel. Move fast. Stay in the shadows. Conserve ammo. And pray.”
66
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 5:01 p.m. – THE JERUSALEM TUNNELS
Flashlight in hand, Natasha sprinted into her tunnel.
It was wider than the others, maybe four feet across. But there was no place to hide. The ground was solid limestone. If she’d had a week she couldn’t have dug a foxhole deep enough. Nor was there a single boulder or outcropping behind which she could take cover. The only hope she had was to get low, stay low, keep quiet, and hope to God no one found her.
She turned off her flashlight and lay down, straining to hear any sound, any movement. She had never been in such utter darkness. It was unnerving. The limestone was cold to her legs and stomach. But it was dry. Somewhere, somehow, this system had once been sealed off from all the other waterworks running under it. When? Why?
She clenched her fists and noticed how wet with perspiration her hands were. They were trembling. She was scared—almost as scared of being alone as she was of dying.
With the death of her grandfather, Natasha was utterly alone in the world. Except for her cousin, Miriam, whom she practically never saw, nearly everyone she’d ever loved had died a brutal, senseless death. Were the Bennetts about to suffer that very same fate? She couldn’t bear it. She had become close to them in the last few days. In some ways she felt like she’d known them all her life.
They weren’t just newlyweds. They were so obviously in love. They were soul mates, as she’d once been with Binyamin.
And they had something else she envied. They really seemed to know God. Not about Him. They actually seemed to know Him—personally. Theirs weren’t rote, liturgical prayers. They really seemed to be talking to someone who was listening and answering. How was that possible? She read the same Bible they did. But to her it was a treasure map, guiding her to the secrets of an ancient world. To them it was a letter from a God who loved them. And though Natasha dared not tell a soul, she was jealous.
She’d always considered herself a tough, smart, independent woman, and in many ways she’d become even more so since her husband’s death. But the last few months—indeed, the last few days—had changed all that. She could feel the tectonic plates of history shifting under her feet. She wasn’t sure if she bought into all of Uncle Eli’s talk about the earth’s “last days.” But something strange was happening. That much was certain. And the death of her grandfather had rattled her, forcing all of her fears and insecurities to the surface.
She longed for Jon’s and Erin’s inexplicable sense of calm. It seemed to steady them, even when all hell was breaking loose. She coveted the sense of purpose and destiny that kept them moving forward when anyone else in their right mind would have given up and turned back. They were risking their lives every day, and for what? Even if they lived, what were they going to get out of all this? It was clear they loved Israel, and Uncle Eli, and it was clear they loved her. Humanly speaking it made no sense.
Being followers of Christ had certainly made a difference in their lives, she knew. Particularly Jon’s. She knew just enough about him to know that being here cut against everything he’d been raised to believe, everything he’d begun to achieve on Wall Street and in Washington. There was something about becoming a follower of Christ that had radically reshaped the way he thought, the way he made choices. He had once been driven by wealth and power. But now he was willing to sacrifice everything for his God and for this woman he loved. It suddenly occurred to her how desperately she wanted to know this same God for herself, before it was too late.
The problem, frankly, was Jesus. He said He was the Messiah. She had read the New Testament. She knew He had said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” She also knew He had said that the only way to know God personally was to be “born again.” It’s why His disciples loved Him. It’s why His enemies hated Him. But was it true?
Logically, Natasha knew she had only two choices: either Jesus was the Messiah or He wasn’t. If He wasn’t, and He knew He wasn’t, then He was a liar, not the good man or moral teacher she’d always described Him as. Then again, if Jesus wasn’t the Messiah but thought He was, then He was crazy, a lunatic, a nutcase not worthy of a second thought.
But she’d read the New Testament in college, and the Christ whose life she’d read about didn’t strike her as deceptive or delusional. To the contrary, she saw a man of love and compassion, someone who was kind to children and willing to take on the religious hypocrites of the day on behalf of the poor and the unloved and the widows. She saw someone humble and wise, someone with the ability to do miracles that astounded even His most bitter skeptics. The truth was, she liked Jesus, but where did that leave her?
If He wasn’t lying or crazy, then He would have to be the Messiah. He would have to be Lord. Which would mean that when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” He would have to be telling the truth. She wasn’t sure if she could believe that. She wasn’t sure if—
Natasha suddenly heard automatic gunfire coming from somewhere else in the tunnels. She feared the worst. Was it Erin fighting for her life, or Jon? She couldn’t just lie here. She had to do something. She knew it could be a trap, luring her out into the open. Yet everything in her urged her forward.
She got to her feet.
The gunfire seemed louder. Was it coming her way? Natasha couldn’t pinpoint its source, but it definitely seemed to be coming closer. Her fear grew.
A massive explosion shook the caverns. Then another. And a third. She gripped the Uzi in her hands and tried to imagine how this could possibly end well. She knew she should pray, but how? She didn’t know how to begin or what to say.
The tunnel was suddenly filled with a blinding light. A split second later, she heard the explosion, felt the force of the blast, and knew exactly what was happening. It was a flash grenade. Their pursuers were systematically throwing one grenade after another into the tunnels to kill them or smoke them out, and now they’d found her.
And then she heard more automatic-weapons fire—very close—and felt the bullets tearing into her flesh.
67
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 5:29 p.m. – THE JERUSALEM TUNNELS
The flash grenade had exposed Natasha to her enemies.
But it had a second, if unintended, effect. It revealed—for a moment, at least—where their attackers were positioned, and both Jon and Erin seized the moment and opened fire. The tunnels filled again with fire and tracer rounds and a deafening roar as the Bennetts fought to save their friend.
A moment later, Erin shouted, “Jon, someone’s coming your way.”
It was still almost impossible to see people moving about. But Bennett took his wife’s word by faith, if not by sight. He sprayed the entranc
e to the central tunnel with submachine-gun fire, back and forth until he heard someone cry out in pain and drop to the ground with a thud.
“Got him,” he shouted back.
“Great. I think I got one, too.”
The gun battle raged on for another quarter of an hour. Every few seconds, Bennett rolled to one side of his tunnel, fired off a few rounds, then rolled to the center, fired again, and so forth, constantly changing his pattern, constantly trying to keep his hunters off balance. At one point, he pulled out his flashlight, turned it on, then moved to the other side of the tunnel as fast as he could. Predictably, the light drew fire, thus exposing the enemy’s position. Bennett unleashed half a magazine before the man’s screaming stopped and he made no other sounds.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it seemed, all the shooting stopped.
Bennett lay still in the darkness, and time lost all meaning. Had it been ten minutes? twenty? a half hour? more? He strained for any possible sound, any shred of evidence that his pursuers were still alive, or that Erin and Natasha were. He could see nothing, not even the ground inches from his face. He could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart. He prayed continuously for his wife, for her safety and comfort, and for Natasha. Were they alive? Was it safe to go find them?
Suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder.
Terrified, he instinctively turned and pointed the Uzi into the darkness. He was about to pull the trigger when Erin whispered, “Jon, it’s okay, it’s okay—it’s me.”
“Thank God,” said Bennett. “How did you—I—I almost shot you. Where are you?”
Erin turned on her flashlight, covering most of the bulb with her left hand.
Trembling—but relieved—Bennett embraced her tightly as she turned off the flashlight, and they sat in the dark.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“I heard you.”
“What?”
“I heard you praying.”
“You did?”
“I think you were also reciting the Twenty-third Psalm.”
“Out loud?” asked Bennett in disbelief.
“Believe me,” Erin whispered back, “it was a total answer to my prayers.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean when all the shooting stopped and everything got quiet, I was praying for wisdom—you know, when to move, when to find you. Then in the distance I heard a voice. It was faint, but for some reason I just started moving toward it. It was so soft, so quiet, I thought it might be Natasha.”
“Have you found her?”
“No, not yet.”
“You think we’re clear?”
“I don’t know,” Erin said. “But, hey, I’m taking the fact that you weren’t shot dead for praying out loud as a pretty good sign.”
If he wasn’t still so anxious, Bennett might have laughed out loud. “You think if someone was going to take a shot, he’d have done it by now?” he asked.
“That’s my guess,” said Erin. “It’s been almost forty-five minutes since the last shots were fired.”
Bennett couldn’t believe it had been that long. He stood up and turned on his flashlight. Erin squeezed his hand, apparently more worried than she’d let on. He stood motionless for a moment, waiting, wondering what would happen next. But nothing did. It was quiet. So Erin followed suit, and there was still no gunfire.
Uzis at the ready, they shone their flashlights around the tunnel and found a man lying facedown at the entrance. Erin crouched and checked for a pulse while Bennett aimed at the man’s chest. He was Caucasian, thirtyish, maybe thirty-five, with dark hair, olive skin, and a five o’clock shadow. But he was dead all right. Erin counted four bullet holes, though there may have been more. She picked up his weapon and checked for an ID of some kind. There was none.
They quickly spotted two more bodies, lying at the entrance to the tunnel Erin had been hiding in. Bennett rounded up their weapons and checked for IDs, but again there was nothing. Then they turned their flashlights farther down the tunnel to see if they could find any other bodies, and suddenly they couldn’t breathe.
Twenty yards away was an opening in the tunnel wall. It had previously been hidden by large stones, but apparently the force of the grenade blasts had created an entrance. They grabbed their backpacks, raced forward, and began feverishly clearing the rubble. When they were done, they entered a world they could hardly have imagined.
Inside was an enormous room, ringed by iron torchstands, none of which seemed ever to have been used. Bennett found a box of matches in his pack and lit the torch closest to them, and the room filled with light.
Both he and Erin gasped, for before them stood three mountains of gold and silver and bronze coins, each towering at least twenty feet in the air. And that was just the beginning. As they cautiously inched their way forward, they continued lighting torches and finding more treasures. In one chamber they found ten gold lampstands, hundreds of solid gold sprinkling bowls, and piles of gold censers and dishes, all stacked on and below ten tables. In another chamber, at least as large, they found thousands of bricks made of pure gold. Yet another room was stacked floor to ceiling with bricks of pure silver, along with hundreds of gold items that looked like fruit of some kind—apples or perhaps pomegranates. The chamber beside that one held gold wick trimmers, gold tongs, gold nails and firepans and spoons, silver and bronze basins, pots, shovels, meat forks, and other articles related to the Temple sacrificial system.
Bennett’s mind reeled. They had done it—almost by accident, it seemed, but they had done it.
As they probed still deeper, their minds could barely comprehend what their eyes were seeing. Before them now stood the golden altar of the Temple and a pair of sculptured cherubim overlaid with gold. Their eyes went wide and their mouths grew parched. They didn’t know what to say and probably could not have gotten the words out anyway. Could these be the very ones that King Solomon had ordered built, Bennett wondered, the ones of which it was said in 2 Chronicles 3, “Then he made two sculptured cherubim in the room of the holy of holies and overlaid them with gold,” with a “wingspan” of “twenty cubits”?
It didn’t seem possible. And yet there it was. Illuminated by the flickering flames of the torches, the rooms glowed with the reflected glory of a lost world, now resurrected. The beauty and craftsmanship of the objects were beyond compare.
Jon and Erin wanted to touch everything, to feel the gold between their fingers, to reconnect in some small way with Levitical priests whose hands had last touched these precious artifacts two millennia before. But the truth was they were both scared, as well. Men had been hunting for these treasures throughout the ages, and now here they were, standing amid the greatest fortune man had ever amassed and willingly handed over to a God they could not see. And suddenly they felt unworthy even to be in its presence.
“I should find Natasha,” Erin whispered.
“Good idea,” Bennett whispered back. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” she said. “You should stay here. Start taking pictures. The Copper Scroll doesn’t begin to do this justice.”
68
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:44 p.m. – THE JERUSALEM TUNNELS
Erin grabbed a torch and her Uzi.
She aimed them both down the tunnel. She was largely confident they were alone. But Langley training dies hard, and she took her time until she was sure.
* * *
Bennett, meanwhile, fished through the backpacks.
He pulled out a notebook and a digital camera and began taking pictures of everything. In one room his eyes locked on a small box—about the size of a jewelry box—made of gold and studded with diamonds but covered with centuries of dust and cobwebs. Not sure why he was drawn to it when far greater treasures lay all around him, he nevertheless carefully reached down to pick up the box and dust it off. He tried to open its lid but found it stuck—sealed, it appeared, with a strange combination of wax and tar.
He pulled
out his pocketknife, scraped away the tar, and finally pried it open. Inside was a clay jar roughly the size of a soda can, with a clay lid also smothered in wax and tar. Again he used his knife to pry off the lid, which he then set down on a pile of golden bowls. With his left hand, he tilted the jar to the side.
Into his right hand there slid a scroll—rectangular, about six inches long, three inches wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. But it was not made of papyrus, or animal skins, or even copper. This scroll was made of gold.
Bennett’s hands began to tremble. He set down the jar, wiped his left hand on his pants, and carefully cleaned off the surface of the scroll. Engraved on its face was lettering in what seemed to be a bizarre combination of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek letters, laced with yet another alphabet, none of which he could read. Like the Copper Scroll, it appeared to be a list of some kind, this one bearing seven entries. And then he turned it over.
He gasped, for on the back of the scroll was an etching of the Ark of the Covenant. Even in miniature, it was gorgeous, far more beautiful and detailed than anything he’d ever seen in books or the movies, and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
The Hebrew Ark. The most sought-after religious artifact in history. And the most dangerous. Could what he was holding in his hands possibly be a clue to where it now rested? He could only imagine the uproar that would be sparked around the globe simply by the unveiling of the Temple treasures. How much more tumult would the discovery of the Ark bring about?
Bennett’s quivering hands slowly closed over the golden scroll. He needed Erin and Natasha.
* * *
Erin stared at the trail of blood.
And the broken flashlight, covered with bloody fingerprints.
The Copper Scroll Page 30
