The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (26 page)

In the distance, a string of vehicles with flashing lights were followed by what looked like a convoy of military vehicles, all racing west on Highway One toward Tel Aviv. But Annie’s mind was focused on one burning thought—all those she loved were being threatened or killed, and she was ready to do anything to have it end.

“I still see her face in my dreams,” said Annie. “I watched helplessly as those murderers sliced open Kallie’s throat. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look in her eyes. But I can’t forget it. Tom … I’m going. I’m going to finish this, even if I’m the only one who wants to continue. And the people who are out there who want to do us harm? I’m just as determined to do them harm. Not revenge, but justice. Tom, we are called to this task, remember? I don’t think there’s any getting out of this for us. I can’t speak for the rest, but if finding this staff is the thing that finally sets us free, then I’m finding that staff.”

“What happens if we
do
find it? What will we do with it?”

“I don’t—”

The ring made both of them jump. Tom looked at his wrist, at the light flashing on the improbable wristwatch he had been given by Sam Reynolds—the one that doubled as a satellite phone. This couldn’t be good news. Tom raised his wrist, pressed on the watch face. “Yes?”

“You weren’t at the apartment,” said Reynolds.

“We went for a walk.”

“Well, you’re going for more than a walk. Get packed. You’re leaving. All of you. I can’t get you on a plane until tomorrow morning, but you’re going out on the first one in the morning. Make sure—”

“Wait. What’s going on?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Nothing good. I’ve got to go. Just be ready early tomorrow. You’re leaving, Tom. Like it or not, you’re all going home. And there’s no discussion about this. You’re going to be on that plane in the morning, even if I have to tie you into the seat.”

Reynolds disconnected with a finality that was disconcerting.

Tom met Annie’s inquiring gaze. “C’mon. We have a decision to make.”

10:18 a.m., Saudi Arabia

Colonel Farouk, one of the king’s myriad cousins, set the last of the charges against the rear wall of the vacant metal building. He looked down the lane of sand, through the compound of pipes, huts, and small empty buildings that were not in existence a week ago. A few trucks were scattered along the lane in front of the buildings. Two large tankers were stationed alongside the two-footwide pipes that emerged from the Saudi sand but didn’t exist under it, and ran through a series of valves, completing the charade.

His aide drove into the lane in a Jeep and stopped by his side.

“Our pumping station is secure. It looks like a mound of sand, like the thousand mounds of sand that stretch away on either side of it. We’re ready.”

The colonel flipped the switch on the last of the charges and climbed in alongside his aide. “Drive east one hundred meters.”

The Jeep raced along the surface of the sand, kicking up a tail of grit in its wake. His aide pulled the vehicle into a tight turn so the colonel could survey his handiwork. Within moments, a series of explosions leap-frogged through the compound, creating enough damage to make the site look devastated, but not enough to reveal its bogus reality.

Once they drove back, the colonel walked through the wreckage, taking time to inspect the result. He engaged the underground devices that would pour thick, black smoke into the atmosphere.

“Good. Let’s go to the next location.”

“You set off the explosions yourself?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“And the result?”

“Just as you requested, Your Excellency. From the air or a satellite, the pumping stations will appear as if they have been totally destroyed. Fires are burning at each location and will continue to burn with heavy, black smoke until your command to extinguish them. The pumping equipment is effectively camouflaged. Our planes flew over the sites this morning and could see nothing of the intact units.”

Saudi King Abbudin smiled. “Thank you, Colonel. You have done well. You will receive my appreciation.”

10:24 a.m., Jerusalem

They were all in the living room, except Rizzo. The television was on. It didn’t matter what channel because all channels were broadcasting the same thing—images of explosions, smoke, and fire as Hezbollah rockets dropped death into Israeli cities. Even Tel Aviv was hit this time. Ben Gurion Airport had been spared, but only a limited number of flights were getting through Israel’s tightened air defenses.

The banners across the bottom of the screen, one in Hebrew and one in English, reported the news that Iran had just attacked American warships and blockaded the Strait of Hormuz.

“’Tis no surprise, now is it?” said McDonough. “After those raids on Iran, with all those poor people dying, tis no surprise there’s been some retaliation. As me sainted mother used to say, ‘Everyone feels his own wound first.’”

Deirdre was scrunched into a straight-backed chair next to the television, her legs crossed tightly and her hands wound as tight as a mother’s fear. “Do you think this will mean a war?”

“It already is a war,” said her husband, standing by her side.

“I want to go home, Joe. The kids are there. They’ll need us.” She looked up into his eyes. “Can you find out when we can get a flight?”

Tom stood in the doorway with Annie. None of those in front of the TV had noticed their return.

“We’ve got a flight,” Tom said into the room, startling Deirdre. “We’ve been ordered to leave tomorrow morning, first thing. Sam Reynolds called, and it’s all arranged. We all go home tomorrow.”

He and Annie walked across the living room and joined the group in front of the TV. “Reynolds told us we’d soon find out why.”

But before Tom could settle in front of the scenes of rocket warfare, his brother-in-law grasped his left arm and steered him away from the TV. “You’re just giving up?”

Tom shook his head. “What are we going to do, Joe? I mean, ignoring all the logistical obstacles in our way for the moment, there’s a war starting out there. How could we … I mean, how do we get around a war? And what do we do even if we get into Iraq, if we got to Babylon? The stuff that Stew and Connor got off the sprockets would probably help us if we ever got to stand before the gate to the garden of Eden—that still sounds weird saying it. But where do we look? How do we get to wherever the garden is located, which is probably underground after twenty-five hundred years?”

“But, Tom, if it couldn’t be found,” asked Annie, coming to his side, “why was Spurgeon so fearful about anyone discovering the sprockets? Why did he say the sprockets were more dangerous than anything he had discovered before?”

Bohannon ran his hand through his hair—seemed to be less of it now than just a few months ago. “I don’t know. The directions from the sprockets cover a short distance—some paces this way, some paces that way. You’re not going to cover a lot of ground doing that. Maybe they’ll help if we find the garden. But how
do
we find it?”

“Road signs.”

Tom turned to see Rizzo walk into the room, some papers in his hand.

“Look, Sam. Right now we don’t need your wisecracks.” Joe wasn’t attempting to keep the frustration from his voice. “Reynolds is determined we’re leaving tomorrow morning, one way or another. Unless we can come up with some ideas, we’re all heading home.”

“I’m serious,” said Rizzo. He walked over and put three sheets of paper into Tom’s hand. “The Dorabella will lead us to the garden.”

“Are you kidding?” snapped Joe. “How would you know that? How are we going to decipher something people smarter than us have been trying to break for the last 150 years?”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” said Rizzo, gesturing toward the paper in Bohannon’s hands. “I’ve already figured it out.”

The news report continued to flow from the television, but for Tom, the room suddenly became silent. He looked at the sheets of paper in his hand, covered with columns of symbols. When he looked up, he joined the rest of the group in staring at Rizzo, dumbfounded and mute.

It was McDonough who broke the spell. “You solved the Dorabella?”

“It’s really pretty simple,” said Rizzo. “Any one of you could have figured it out, too. Look. Come over here.”

Holding out his hand, Rizzo retrieved the papers from Tom and walked into the dining area, the others close behind. He climbed up on a chair and laid out the three pieces of paper on the table. Each one was about eight inches on a side, marked with a large red letter at the upper right corner—
A, B, C
from left to right. Down the length of each sheet were three vertical lines of symbols. Rizzo pointed to the sheet of paper on the left.

“These are the relevant Demotic symbols from Abiathar’s scroll,” he said, pointing to the sheet marked with an
A
. “When we considered the possibility that Elgar used the code pattern on the scroll to help create the code pattern for the Dorabella Cipher, that opened the door—testing out the pattern on the Dorabella with the pattern on the Rosetta Stone. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t translate the Demotic symbols. We simply followed the pattern of the Demotic symbols to the corresponding Greek, translated the Greek letters to English and came up with Abiathar’s message.

“So,” said Rizzo, pointing to the sheet on the left, “these Demotic symbols over here correspond to—are the same as—these Greek letters on sheet B over here.
A
equals
B
, right?”

A smile began to spread over Tom’s face as comprehension dawned.

“Elgar wrote the Dorabella Cipher over there”—he pointed to the third sheet of paper, with the red
C
in its upper corner—“in the same pattern as the Demotic symbols he found on the scroll. Which means that
A
on the left also corresponds to, is the same as
C
on the right. Correct?”

“Simple algebra,” said Annie. “A substitution code.”

“Bingo, boys and girls!” Rizzo nodded his head as if it were the clapper on a bell. “If
A
equals
B
, and
C
equals
A,
then
B
must equal C. Which means that in the Dorabella Cipher, these little C-shaped squiggles must correspond to, match up to, these Greek letters that are the same as these relevant Demotic symbols from the scroll. Write down the Greek symbols in the order of the Dorabella, translate to English, and—voilà!” Rizzo raised his fists in a Rocky pose. “We’ve got a winner.”

“Simple … but amazing,” whispered Tom.

Joe put a hand on Rizzo’s shoulder. “You are an evil genius, Sammy.”

“Thank you. I accept the compliment.”

“An astoundingly fine piece of work, Samuel.” Brandon McDonough rounded the far side of the table. “But what does it say?”

“I’ll tell you what it says, but first”—Rizzo leaned back in the chair and smiled—“let me tell you what I think it means.

“I told Joe the other day that I was sure the Dorabella had some further role to play in this drama. So I went to work on Kallie’s computer—didn’t take long to break the password. I discovered that Charles Spurgeon developed a long relationship with Sir Charles Warren when both lived in London.”

“The guy who tunneled under the Temple Mount?” asked Joe.

“The one and only. Warren was also, at one time, the chief of police in London and returned to London after several of his military assignments overseas. On one of his trips back to London, after being in command of the British garrison in Singapore, Warren took a long detour. Instead of returning all the way to England by ship, he sailed up the Persian Gulf and took the land route to the Mediterranean. On the way, he joined up with a British Museum archaeological expedition with which he spent more than a month. Want to guess where they were?” Rizzo paused and glanced at the blank expressions around him before he dropped the bomb.

“Babylon. The leader of this expedition was an Assyrian Christian named Hormuzd Rassam. He spent four years digging in and around Babylon. Found a lot of famous stuff. But what’s interesting to us is that his mother was born in Aleppo, Syria. Her father was Ishaak Halabee—that’s like Isaac. He was the chief rabbi of the Aleppo Synagogue.”

By this time, Tom and Annie, Joe, Deirdre, and McDonough had all pulled up chairs to the table and were passing around the three sheets of Rizzo’s paper.

“Well, I’ll be …” Tom sat across the table from Rizzo, just shaking his head.

“Yes, you will,” said Rizzo. “Warren found it. I don’t know how, but Warren found the way to the garden.”

Rizzo pulled another, smaller piece of paper from his pocket. “Listen, this is what the Dorabella says:

“Holy Mother … if it weren’t me own ears,” said McDonough, “I wouldn’t believe what I’m hearing. ’Tis really the gate to the garden?”

Rizzo handed the sheet of paper to Tom, who looked at it as if he held the words of God in his hand. “We won’t know for sure,” said Rizzo, “until we go and knock on that gate.”