The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (23 page)

His fingers felt for the dagger that was concealed under his robes.
Soon … one day soon.
But Abbudin kept his response to words.

“More than a stick, my brother. It destroyed all of Israel’s enemies. Only fair that, now, this weapon be used against the Jews. And a devastating weapon it is. We believe we know where it is and the way for us to get that staff into our possession.”

“And where is it?”

“Inside the gate to Adam’s garden.”

“And why is this stick not already in your possession?”

Yes … why?
“It will be. And soon. Al-Sadr’s hate was too small,” said Abbudin. “The Caliphate will become the third world superpower. The West will be in the death grip of economic and political anarchy. We don’t need occupying armies; we will occupy their banks and tie their hands.

“And while the West is handcuffed and impotent, we will deal ultimately, and finally, with Israel. We will wipe it from the map of the Middle East—and perhaps use its own weapon, a supernatural weapon of mass destruction, against it.”

11:25 p.m., Jerusalem

“I thought it would be quick once she figured it out,” said Connor, “but it took us hours to come up with this, going back and forth, testing out each theory to see if it held up against all the possible combinations of the discs.”

Tom looked at the screen and the chaotic schematic that Connor held in front of him, fifty-six hundred miles away in New York where it was early evening. Rizzo was sitting on Tom’s right, the rest crowded behind them trying to see the screen of the secure laptop Sam Reynolds had given him.

“Buster,” said Rizzo, “I’ve had Picasso dreams that looked better than that scribble. It looks like the universe in the midst of the Big Bang gone bust.”

Connor lowered the sheet of paper. “Glad to see you’re back to form, Mr. Rizzo. Here. Let me make it simple.”

“Wait a minute, Connor.” Annie pressed in from Bohannon’s left to get in the camera’s frame. “Are you okay? You look … different. Stressed? Is there something wrong? Where’s Caitlin?”

“You don’t need to worry, Mom. I’m fine. I’m a big boy, and Caitlin and I are staying at Uncle Dan’s, like you wanted. Don’t worry—we’re as safe as we can be.”

“I’m glad you’re both safe,” said Tom as he rubbed Annie’s hand.

“Yeah. I wish you and Mom were here, too, but I know this is … bigger … than you just wanting an adventure. I’m sorry about—”

“I understand, Connor. You were right. There’s nothing to apologize for. We’ll be fine. God is directing our steps.”

“Eeeeewwwww—goo patrol.” Rizzo pushed his way in front of the camera. “Come on. Let’s get back to that work of art—what did you guys find out?”

Holding the paper in front of him so the camera could still record the image, Connor slid over to the right. “Dad, what are carved into the sprockets are directions.”

The silence of a church service filled the apartment.

“Directions? Directions from Spurgeon?” Tom asked.

“No, Dad. Dr. Smith believes the sprockets are just as old as the mezuzah—probably twenty-five hundred years old, give or take. And since they’re in Demotic and the scroll was written in Demotic, there’s obviously some kind of connection. But there was something else that Stew discovered.”

“As soon as she said we were looking at directions, I started working the probabilities,” Stew said. “Dr. Smith began by adding possible solutions in a random fashion—‘if this one means north then this one might mean south’—but that was just taking us down a lot of blind alleys. I figured if the sequences were in fact directions, they must include two basic elements—both how far and which way—distance in numbers and direction in letters. We knew Mr. Squiggle was highly likely to mean paces, so the numbers would be before the paces and the way to go would come after.

“The first challenge was to decipher the number, or numbers, before the word
paces
and the direction after—was it a one-letter or two-letter direction? It took us awhile, but I think we finally got that right. What really had us stumped was where to start. Where did the directions start? That’s what all those circles and symbols on the drawing are—the discs and different combinations. That’s when Dr. Smith realized that some of the set sequences were actually different, in a different pattern.”

He took apart the discs, checked out the faces, then attached them again in a different combination. “See, this is an odd one,” he said, holding the face of the disc to the camera. “You can see there are three symbols and then Mr. Squiggle. But Dr. Smith figured out they were in a different order. Mr. Squiggle was out of sequence. We soon realized there were actually two things going on with these discs. Half of the ways we could view the symbols were exactly the same pattern: two numbers, paces, and a direction letter. In the other half of the views, Mr. Squiggle came after the direction instead of before it. Every ninety-degree twist on the guide disc alternated the relative position of Mr. Squiggle and the direction symbol.”

“Whoa, Hiawatha,” said Rizzo, throwing up his hand. “My brain just blew a gasket. Sets and patterns and paces and directions. I don’t know if we’re going to the market or we’re going to Mars. Can you make it all a little more complicated? And then I can just check out completely.”

“I’m with Rizzo on this one,” said Joe, from over Tom’s shoulder. “I lost you back at Mr. Squiggle Part Two. What does it all mean?”

Stew put down the pieces of paper. “In a nutshell, we’ve got sixteen sets that tell us to go this many paces in this direction. Simple. But the other sixteen sets are not so simple.”

“Swell. Shoot me now.” Rizzo dropped his head into his hands.

Stew scratched his beard. “Well, with the symbols changing position relative to each other, Dr. Smith couldn’t be sure. She thought one group said something about
choosing one
and
follow by hand,
and the rest looked like some sort of astrology. She said it looked like stars and planets, a sequence of stars and planets. Then it hit her that they were astrological directions. She said the Chaldeans numbered the constellations and some of the major planets—what they thought were big stars. After doing some research, she determined that the second sixteen sets of symbols looked more like a combination than directions. You know, like a combination to open something. And she thought it might be saying something about the Roman god Jupiter and—”

“No. Not the Roman Jupiter, but the planet Jupiter,” Tom interrupted. “And I bet there’s a symbol for Venus.”

“How do you know that?” Manthey asked.

“This sequence of stars and planets is not astrology,” said Tom. “I’m confident this sequence is intended to represent the sky on the night Christ was born, the Incarnation. And I believe that sequence—starting with the confluence of Jupiter and Venus, which became known as the Star of Bethlehem—is the pattern that will need to be touched by hand to gain entrance. I don’t think the correct interpretation is about choosing one, like choosing a place to start. I believe it says
the chosen one
is to follow this pattern by hand.”

Bohannon looked sideways to Joe and opened both hands, palms up, in an unspoken question. He turned back to the computer screen.

“Stew, do you know where we’re going?” Tom tried to will himself through the computer and into Manthey’s understanding.

Manthey raised his gaze from the diagram. “Not really, but maybe,” he said. “I like puzzles. I think I’m starting to put some of the pieces together. But, no, I don’t know for sure.”

“But you think you may have a combination for us?”

“Maybe—at least part of one.”

Tom stood and turned away from the computer, motioning Annie and Joe to join him a few feet away. “How much do you think we should tell them?”

Joe stretched his neck as he shook his head. But Annie was more direct.

“Nothing—and that’s not negotiable.” Her voice had the force of a slamming door. “The more they know, the more of a threat they are to our friends with the amulet. We’re not putting Connor or Stew in any more danger than they already are.”

Joe looked like a recently captured jungle cat in his first cage. He couldn’t remain still. His shoulders rippled forward and backward. He shifted from one foot to the other, and his hands wrestled with the air. But his words were calm, confident. “Really doesn’t matter. If the Prophet’s Guard still has guys in New York, then your kids, our kids, Stew Manthey, they all are probably already in their sights. What we tell them or don’t tell them today won’t change that.”

Annie’s eyes were pleading. Joe’s eyes were closed as he pulled in a deep breath. Tom felt alone, again. It was up to him to make a decision: the loneliest place in the world.

“Then,” said Tom, “we tell them what we’re looking for.”

“Tom!” Annie’s fingers balled into fists.

He took her hands and pried her fingers open. “Listen, Annie, they’re already in the middle of this thing. They’re thousands of miles away, and they’ve got the clues. We’re going to need all the help we can get to make sure we go in the right direction. What if they have information that we need, that is critical for us, but they don’t know to share it because they don’t understand what we’re trying to do? They have what may be the last piece to the puzzle. They need to have some understanding of what the puzzle looks like so they can assess the piece in their hands.” Annie’s eyes still pleaded, less intensely, as Tom turned back to the computer, his heart racing and his soul praying that he was doing the right thing.
God, protect my boy.

“Stew, it’s a long story, and we’ve got very little time. We’ve discovered a connection from Abiathar to Jeremiah that led us to an ancient book. In that book was a coded message that revealed to us what this whole ordeal has really been about. The Prophet’s Guard has been after the mezuzah not because of the message on the scroll, but because of the story that all the messages tell us. A story combined with this book we’ve studied, which tells us Jeremiah carried Aaron’s staff to Babylon to return it to its source—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden.”

Connor motionless to his right, Stew didn’t bat an eyelash. “Someday I’ve got to process why what you’ve just said doesn’t make me believe you should be committed to an asylum. But it doesn’t. What does this have to do with Aaron’s staff?”

“That’s the key to the whole thing. Aaron’s staff was the true power of the Ark of the Covenant. It was the staff that brought down the plagues of Egypt, that split the Red Sea, that knocked down the walls of Jericho. When the staff was removed from the Ark, the Ark had no power. The staff is the most powerful weapon in the history of the world. And the Guard—we think the Muslim Brotherhood is behind it all—they want the staff. They want it to help usher in Islamic rule over the entire earth.”

“Okay, now I get it,” said Stew. “And you believe these directions will help you—”

“Yeah … to open the gate of the garden of Eden. When we get there, I expect there will be some combination or code needed to get in.”

“And there’s also that little item of the angels with the flaming swords guarding the place so Adam could never come back.”

“Yes,” said Bohannon. “There’s that, too. But one hurdle at a time. I’ll worry about them if and when we ever get there. But for now, give us what you’ve got … the directions and the combination. We’ll—”

“Dad, wait.” Connor pushed his head on-screen. “How do you know where to start to find the garden of Eden?”

“Ha!” blurted Rizzo. “This I want to see. If you guys think we’re crazy now, wait till you hear this cockamamie yarn. Go ahead, Moses. Tell them about the burning bush.”

Bohannon looked over to his wife. The team had listened to their story of the Gabriel encounter with the same level of disbelief and wonder that Tom and Annie felt in telling the tale. But there it was. Tom heard stories of other people with “angel encounters.” He was always skeptical. But how else to explain that extraordinary conversation in the basement of the Ades Synagogue?

“Well,” said Bohannon, “I, ummm … we, ummm … I mean, I guess …”

“Great start,” laughed Rizzo. “Next thing you’ll be telling Connor that you met an angel.”

S
UNDAY
, A
UGUST
30

5:13 a.m., Doha, Qatar

Only three months earlier, his father, Sheik Achmed, announced he was transferring power as the Emir of Qatar to his thirty-three-year-old third son, Khaliffa. Now, Sheik Khaliffa bin Nasser al-Bruni faced an unexpected crisis.

Normally, one couldn’t find a sleepier little Persian Gulf country than Qatar. The richest nation in the world, with a per capita income of $109,000, Qatar provided its citizens—two hundred fifty thousand of the two million inhabitants of the Qatar Peninsula—with free housing, free medical care, free education, and low-interest loans for anything else they needed.

An absolute and hereditary emirate under control of the al-Bruni family since the middle of the nineteenth century, Qatar held to a precarious balancing act.

On the one hand, Khaliffa’s father spent more than $1.5 billion to build the Al Uedid air base, now the comfortable home for American F-15 fighters, B-1 stealth bombers, and Patriot antiballistic missile batteries of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the United States Air Force, and the USAF Central Command for the Middle East.

On the other hand, the Sunni al-Bruni family of Qatar was one of the main supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its deposed president, Mohammed Ayet. During the one year Ayet and the Brotherhood were in power, Qatar lent, or gave, Egypt $7.5 billion. The Qatari government also was one of the first to recognize the Libyan opposition’s National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya amidst the 2011 Libyan civil war, was a major power broker in crafting the peace agreement for Darfur, and was now a prime advocate of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.

Sheik Khaliffa fully expected to continue walking the tightrope his father had stretched over the tiny country’s international presence. But now, his visitor threatened all Khaliffa had come to expect was not only his present reality, but his future, as well.