The Jerusalem Creed: A Sean Wyatt Thriller (5 page)

Sean looked over at his friend, and Tommy returned the questioning glance. “So,” Sean said, “what do you think?”

Tommy studied the screen for several more seconds before speaking. When he did, his tone was low and secretive. “Whatever it is that Nehem is looking for was important enough to someone that they tried to kill us and burn our houses down.”

“So we’re for sure operating from the theory that it was his research that got us in trouble?”

Sean wasn’t opposed to the idea, but it was a conclusion they were jumping to, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

“It’s the only theory that makes sense right now,” Tommy defended. “It can’t be a coincidence that I get an email from an archaeologist who disappears, and then a few days later someone is trying to kill us. No way that’s a coincidence.”

“I agree. So, what’s our next play?”

Tommy considered the question and then sent it back to Sean. “I know what
I
think we should do. What do
you
think?”

Sean’s mouth parted slightly in a narrow grin. “You know exactly what I’m thinking. We fly to Israel. Sooner or later, we have to find the people that tried to kill us before they hurt anyone else. And maybe along the way we can pay them back for destroying our houses.”

Jerusalem, Israel

Arranging the flights to Israel took a little more doing than usual, even for someone like Tommy who had full-time access to a private company jet. The on-call pilot wasn’t typically available twenty-four hours a day, though he did endeavor to be ready at a moment’s notice. On this occasion, he was already asleep, and by the time he received the messages, it was early the next morning. The man was efficient, though, and had filed the flight plan and made arrangements with Israeli air traffic control so that they would have as little trouble as possible coming in.

The Gulfstream left Atlanta’s Hartsfield International airport in midmorning. When it landed several hours later in Israel, darkness had already fallen across the ancient, sacred land.

Tommy had called his friend, Karem, who lived in the area, and asked if he could be their driver for a few days. Karem had been more than happy to oblige. The forty-two-year-old Israeli was the curator at one of the local antiquities museums. It was a small operation but one that saw tens of thousands of visitors visit every year. His museum contained several important items from Jewish history, including a few that were extremely rare.

Karem also had unlimited access to nearly every high-security site in the land. During Tommy’s last visit, he’d taken the American to see the heavily guarded Isaiah Scroll, one of the most precious and sacred texts the nation of Israel possessed. The scroll had been written on an enormous sheet of thin copper. In the museum display, it was wrapped around a giant stone cylinder so that it could be read from beginning to end. The museum was basically bombproof, and in case of an attack, the scroll and its stone dropped several stories down into the ground, protected by hundreds of feet of concrete.

It had been an impressive sight, and one that very few outsiders were afforded the privilege of seeing.

Karem picked them up at the airport and drove them to the outskirts of Jerusalem where they’d arranged for a room at a hotel where Tommy had stayed once before. They were fortunate a room had been available, though it was one of the most expensive in the place. Luckily for the two Americans, money was no object. The finances Tommy had been left when his parents died years before were significant. Thanks to clever investments and shrewd dealings over the better part of the last decade, his substantial inheritance had grown to the hundreds of millions. With the money, his International Archaeological Agency had been lucky with countless opportunities to save hundreds of priceless treasures from around the world.

After a night of restless and precarious sleep, the two Americans woke up, showered, and got dressed. On the elevator, heading down for a quick breakfast, Tommy glanced over at his friend and shook his head disapprovingly. “Always with the khaki pants.”

Sean glanced down at his pants and then back to Tommy. “What? They’re comfortable. And the last thing I want to be wearing in this hot weather is jeans.”

“You could wear cargo shorts like me.”

“I prefer pants. So sue me.”

Their banter ended as the elevator dinged. They walked through the lobby, a contemporary design with faded olive-green walls contrasted by dark-brown wood flooring. A beautiful young woman with chestnut hair stood behind the concierge desk, greeting people as they came in through the entrance or down from their rooms. Off to the left was a cafe where people were busily eating their breakfasts and talking about the things they looked forward to seeing.

Holy Land tours were big business in the area. Christians, Muslims, and Jews from far and wide came to see the places their respective religions so revered. Tourists were more than happy to pay out thousands of dollars to see the Via Dolorosa, the supposed site of Golgotha, the Mount of Olives, the great mosques, and many other sacred locations.

As the two Americans walked through the cafe and found a table, they couldn’t help but laugh at some of the attire worn by the tourists. They sat down at a table near the window and looked over the menu, deciding to eat light and order some fruit, bread, and cheese for breakfast.

Tommy’s eyes wandered around the room and then returned to his friend. “You know what? I’m sorry I gave you crap about the khakis. These people are dressed way worse than you.”

Sean laughed and pulled a water bottle out of the canvas messenger bag he’d brought along. He twisted the lid off and took a sip before replacing it. “Yeah,” he said, his eyes trailing around the cafe, “it’s like fanny pack central in here.”

Tommy snorted a laugh and nodded.

A minute later, a young man with a white button-up shirt and a black apron around his waist came by and took their order. He set a few glasses of water on the table and disappeared around the corner.

“Karem is meeting us here in twenty minutes?” Sean asked the question he’d already asked earlier regarding their rendezvous with the Israeli.

“Yes. And he’ll be here. Karem is extremely prompt. When he says he will be somewhere, you can count on it.”

Sean nodded and pulled out his phone. He checked a few messages in his email inbox, one of which was from Adriana. She was investigating a shipwreck off the coast of Ibiza, near Spain, and was trying to figure out where the ship had gone. She claimed that someone, a treasure hunter, had unrightfully taken the booty from the ship and had detonated underwater explosives to dispose of the evidence. From the sound of it, she was dealing with dangerous people, but he knew better than to tell her what to do or how to do it. Adriana was her own woman. If she needed his help, she’d ask. And he knew she probably wouldn’t ask.

She was planning on coming to the United States to visit at the end of the month, so he hoped that whatever shenanigans she was up to would reach closure soon.

“Email from Adriana?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah,” Sean said and put the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t sound happy. Probably because he wasn’t. He wished they could spend more time together, but he understood. She was a little younger than him, and was a wild, free spirit.

Tommy folded his hands on the table and tried to look sympathetic. “Everything okay with you two?”

“Yeah, we’re good. She’s just hunting down another lead right now. Sounds like she’s dealing with some potentially dangerous people. But you know how she likes to roll.”

“You worry about her, don’t you?”

Sean’s eyebrows lowered, but he couldn’t deny it. “Of course I worry about her. I know she’s good at what she does. Other than you and me, I’ve never met anyone more capable of handling the kinds of dangers we deal with. At the same time, you know as well as I do that eventually luck can run out.”

Tommy leaned forward. “She’ll be fine, man. Don’t stress yourself out. Right now, we’ve got our own problems to worry about.”

He was right. Sean knew it, too. They were about to embark on a path that would almost certainly be fraught with danger. The only advantage they had at the moment was the hope that whoever had tried to kill them still believed they were dead. If the would-be killers found out that they were still alive, the targets would be on their backs once more, and usually villains in Sean’s line of work didn’t make the same mistake twice.

A few minutes later, the waiter returned with their plates. The two quickly scarfed down the dates, grapes, raisins, and figs. The flattened bread reminded them of sourdough from back home, and the cheese was a mild, white variety that tasted remarkably similar to Havarti.

The little meal was surprisingly filling, and no sooner had they finished than Karem walked in through the entrance.

His face sported a full black beard that matched the thick hair on his head. He was diminutive, around five feet five inches tall, with dark creamy skin. His arms were hairy, and he wore a blue polo with khakis.

“Your friend doesn’t seem to mind the khakis,” Sean pointed out as Karem approached.

Tommy simply shook his head and smirked. “You still owe me a Coke, by the way.”

He stood up, and Sean followed suit. The three shook hands and exchanged clichéd greetings before getting to it.

“The car is just outside,” Karem said. “I figured you would want to see where Dr. Ben Asher was working first.” He directed his next comment to Tommy. “If what you say is true, and Nehem was abducted, I fear anything of value in his temporary housing would have been stolen. It will still be worth a look, but I would not get my hopes up.”

Karem was also a personal friend of Nehem. When Tommy told him what happened, his demeanor instantly became grave. Tommy explained who Sean was and why he was there, which made Karem feel a little better. Still, his hope was tempered by a strong sense of realistic expectation.

“We should be at the dig site in twenty minutes,” he informed the Americans. “From there, perhaps you can find a clue as to who might have taken our friend, and why.”

The ride to the valley just outside the city of Jerusalem was a short one, though it was hampered by the crawling traffic. Buses, vans, cars, and mopeds were everywhere. Summer months were a busy time for the area, and the tourist industry was booming, in spite of the conflicts going on with Islamist militant groups.

On the outskirts of town, the traffic thinned, and the three were able to reach the dig site without any trouble. There were ropes surrounding the area, protecting certain spots from a clumsy onlooker stumbling in and ruining the excavation. Around the perimeter, workers brushed away dirt and clay that had built up over the years as they meticulously continued their search for answers from the past. Some locals in large straw hats sifted dirt through screens and into a plastic bin.

It was still early in the day, but the sun already felt like a June afternoon in Tennessee, beating down on their skin like a warm fire in the sky.

They left the car in a gravel lot near the dig site and walked past the ropes to an area where the rolling earth steepened into a hill. Karem pointed to a particular section of the hillside where a dark cavity had been unearthed. It was the entrance to a tomb.

Two light-brown stone columns, one on either side, supported the entryway. Another stone sat atop the other two over the threshold. Piles of dirt and rock cluttered the ground on either side of the entrance, clearly where the crews had peeled away the layers of time to reveal the ancient doorway.

“This is what Nehem was working on,” he said as they reached the tomb. “You can see the name engraved in the stone.
Tovar, high priest of Judah.”

Moments like this were always reverent for Sean and Tommy. Standing in the presence of something that had recently been unearthed, not seen by human eyes for millennia, brought about feelings of humility and awe.

“So this is what he found,” Tommy said quietly, almost to himself.

Karem nodded. “Please, take a look inside. I have made arrangements with the authorities for you to have as much access as you need.”

The Americans didn’t wait for a second invitation. Sean removed a pair of flashlights from his messenger bag, handing one to his friend and keeping the other. They switched on the lights and tiptoed through the doorway and into the cool darkness of the tomb.

The interior walls were roughly hewn, chiseled away without precision, a result of the workmen just trying to get the job done rather than worry with aesthetics.

Sean wondered about the interior tunnel. “I guess they didn’t treat the high priest like other high ranking officials back then.”

“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing,” Tommy agreed. “Not the nicest tomb we’ve been in.”

Karem was close behind the two Americans with his own flashlight. “Many of the priestly tombs were humble like this one. It was a precedent set early on in Jewish history that carried on until the temple fell for the last time.”

The bright LED beams danced around the walls as the men proceeded deeper into the hillside tomb.

The cramped tunnel came to an end and opened up into a much larger chamber, though still not as vast as they would have anticipated for someone held in such high esteem by the Jewish nation. The room was circular, around fifteen feet in diameter. A stone coffin sat on the floor in the center of the room, coming up to around knee high on the Americans. A skeleton stared up at the wall from within the sarcophagus’s confines, dressed in faded and tattered rags that once must have been priestly raiment.

Sean and Tommy shined their beams into the stone box, staring at the remains of the long-dead priest of Judah.

“So this is Tovar,” Sean said, examining the bones from a few feet away.

“He’s remarkably preserved,” Karem said, pointing out the small amount of tissue still attached to the skull. “Nehem was greatly impressed by that. The stone tablet that he found on the chest of the body is gone. If we cannot find it at his quarters, then we must assume it was taken as well.”

That would have been the same conclusion Tommy and Sean would come to as well.

Tommy wandered over to the end of the chamber closest to the head. He examined the walls and noted the symbol that was carved into the stone, two interlocking triangles that many people called the Davidic Star. He pointed his light to the wall on the right and noticed another symbol. This one, however, was not Jewish. It was something he’d seen before but didn’t immediately realize from where.