The Last Disciple (51 page)

Vitas tried a few more gulps. The bitterness seemed less intense. “Tell me, please,” he said. A warm glow seemed to rise from the center of his belly. “Do you know anything about my wife, Sophia?”

“I do not. Nor do I want to know anything. About her. About you. The less I know, the better. Now drink. Hurry.”

“You are here but don’t know who I am?”

“I have been given instructions. Listen carefully. I was told the future of your wife and unborn child depend on it.”

Vitas straightened.

“First,” the man said, “I am going to leave you with a letter. You must decipher it to find the answers you need.”

“Answers?”

“You cannot listen carefully if you are speaking.” The stranger was curt. “Shall I continue?”

“Yes.”

“Second, there is an obscure matter that Tiberius once brought to Senate vote. You will find it somewhere in the archives. It will be marked with a number.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Then remember this, for the life of your family may depend on it someday.”

“I’m listening. What is the number?”

“It is the number of the Beast. Six hundred and sixty-six.”

“Let me remind you I’m paying good money for that answer,” Damian said, a trifle impatient. “Give me the name of the Beast.”

“Not so fast.” Azariah was obviously enjoying this. “Let’s talk more about the Beast. I must repeat how ingeniously the author accomplishes so much in so little writing. He says one thing and it can mean three things. The Beast, for example. To our people, in one sense the Beast refers to the Roman Empire, but in another sense, as given by the number 666, it is also about an individual emperor. Here . . .”

Azariah took the letter from Damian, unscrolled it, and scanned it. He paused, searched for a specific portion, found it, and took a breath before reading it as if he were preaching in the synagogue. “‘Now understand this: The seven heads of the beast represent the seven hills of the city where this woman rules. They also represent seven kings. Five kings have already fallen, the sixth now reigns, and the seventh is yet to come, but his reign will be brief. The scarlet beast that was alive and then died is the eighth king. He is like the other seven, and he, too, will go to his doom.’”

Azariah looked up. “Tell me without giving it much thought. What numbers are significant and why?”

Damian did as instructed. “‘Seven hills,’ Rome. That is very obvious. I understood it the first time I read the letter, as would anybody in the world. ‘Five kings have already fallen; the sixth now reigns’? Any child who knows Roman history will answer that.” He ticked off on his fingers as he named the emperors in succession. “Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and now Nero.”

Azariah nodded. “Strictly speaking, Julius Caesar did not allow himself to be called emperor, but he was a de facto emperor and everyone since has referred to him as one. So, yes, it is an obvious reference to the first six emperors after the fall of the Republic.”

“So . . .” Damian spoke more slowly as he tried to think it through. “‘The seventh is yet to come.’ The next emperor? A brief reign? Then the eighth who will go to his doom?”

“One could easily read into that the prediction of a rapid succession of emperors. ‘Doom’ suggests unnatural deaths.”

Damian felt another surge of excitement. “This is suggesting assassination?”

“Several in succession. Perhaps civil war.”

Damian’s mind whirled. Nero would be very agitated to hear of this. He was highly suspicious of plots against his life, especially after a failed one a few years earlier.

Damian’s excitement, however, was tempered by another thought that he spoke to Azariah. “The thought of civil war is ridiculous. The empire is stable and prosperous. A tradition of passing imperial powers from one emperor to the next is well established.”

“I agree,” Azariah said. “And keep in mind, John’s letter is merely a prophecy. But, as you know, one that would strike fear into Nero if he knew of it. His reputation as a superstitious man, after all, is known far and wide.”

“Why fear?” Now Damian knew he was getting to the heart of it.

Azariah rubbed his face, leaving behind grease from the chicken drumstick he had earlier set aside. “I would say that John is writing this letter to give comfort to all the followers of Jesus during this time of persecution and tribulation. He is saying it will not continue indefinitely, and he is promising great rewards to those who persevere.”

“Tribulation?”

“The one that is very obvious to all Romans and Christians. It began shortly after the Great Fire, when Nero laid the blame for it on the Christians, and continues with their horrible public executions.”

“There is an ending to the Tribulation.” Damian recalled what he’d read in the letter. “An ending that happens because the Beast dies. And then the unthinkable. Civil war.”

Azariah shrugged. “If the prophecy were true.”

Yes,
Damian thought,
this is why Helius fears the letter!
Prophecy of Caesar’s death. Nero’s instablility would be worsened to hear of this.

Except for one thing. The Beast in the letter could not be Nero. So Nero would have nothing in this letter to fear.

“I have tried gematria with all the names of rulers I know,” Damian said. “The number 666 does not give me a beast I would recognize. And certainly not Nero.”

“It doesn’t?” Azariah smiled, then wrote a vertical column of letters on the scroll. “Look, here is the Hebrew alphabet. And here—” he sketched a second column beside the first—“the Greek alphabet. Simple, yes?”

“All right.”

“The first ten letters of both alphabets correspond to the first ten numbers, 1 through 10. But the second ten correspond to the next ten
tens.
”

“So
kappa,
the tenth Greek letter, is 10, but the eleventh,
lambda,
is 20.”

“Good. And the third ten letters—”

“Are hundreds, of course,” Damian said, impatient. “I understand that Hebrew gematria uses the same principles as Greek. But John’s letter was written in Greek so why discuss—?”

“Because the writer expects much of his audience to be Hebrew,” Azariah said, obviously anticipating Damian’s objection. “And he knows they will apply gematria accordingly.”

Azariah took the scroll and etched out a few more letters. “As a Roman, you cannot be blamed for not knowing that Hebrew does not use vowels. This is how we spell
Nero Caesar
.”

“Six hundred and sixty-six,” Damian said after a brief calculation. “Nero is the Beast!”

In the prison cell, the stranger grabbed Vitas by the hand. “Are you drowsy yet? warm?”

“Who sent you?” Vitas asked. His tongue felt thick. “What was it I drank?”

“Do you feel this?” the stranger asked.

Vitas was vaguely aware of a pinching sensation on the back of his hand. “Yes,” he mumbled. “I’m not dead yet.”

“Drink more.”

Vitas had no willpower to refuse when the stranger put the jug up to his lips again.

“Empty?” the stranger in his cell asked.

“Who sent you?” Vitas asked again. Or thought he asked again. It was difficult to tell if he’d spoken or simply thought the question.

“Do you feel this?” came the question once more.

“Feel what?”

The stranger dropped Vitas’s hand.

Vitas was dimly conscious of it landing on his own thigh. “Felt it,” Vitas announced with great seriousness. “That was my hand. It’s at the end of my arm.”

“Excellent, excellent.”

More rustling. Had the stranger just draped something around Vitas’s neck?

Then came a hard blow directly across Vitas’s face.

“Wait!” Vitas protested. He tried to lift his hands to protect himself, but his arms were rubber.

Another blow landed.

And another.

“Was the letter coded this way to get past the censors?” Damian asked the rabbi.

“The author of this letter probably knew his treason would be obvious to any careful reader,” Azariah said. “There is enough in it already to suggest that the Beast is Nero. But there is an element of safety, because a Roman censor scanning it would definitely not see Nero as 666, while most of John’s audience would. More important is how uncanny the coincidence between the gematria of Nero’s name and all the layers of symbolism that a Jew sees in 666.”

Azariah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Almost as if an angel truly had given John the vision.”

Damian had no interest in alleged supernatural inspiration of the letter. Only in finding out what he could about John. And more importantly, finding out what Helius feared about John and John’s vision.

“Could Helius or Nero know of this naming of the Beast?” Damian said.

“All they would have to do is ask questions as you did. Darda and I aren’t the only rabbis in Rome.”

“So, in essence, the author of this letter says that Nero is the Beast who opposes the Lamb. . . .”

“The Beast identified, but the empire itself is also the Beast, and will continue to reign even after an apparently mortal wound.”

“Civil war.”
There it is,
Damian thought.
That far-fetched implication again.

“If you can believe that would ever happen,” Azariah said.

“And it predicts when Nero will die,” Damian said calmly, hiding his reaction. A prediction of when Nero would die! What an incredibly important document! Nero placed great faith—and fear—in any omens or prophecies that alluded to him. And to have one that spoke of his death!

“Yes. But remember the other improbable prophecies. That the temple in Jerusalem will fall, for example. If you’ve ever seen the temple high on the mount, you’d know how . . . well . . . how stupid that prediction is.”

“Just for a moment, consider what if the impossible happened, that the temple
did
fall, as the self-proclaimed Messiah Jesus also claimed,” Damian said. “What would that say about Jesus?”

John was Damian’s prey, but by nature Damian was curious. And here, Azariah had made the same statement about the fall of the temple as had Darda. Yet to have a prediction about Nero’s death! If there was any way Damian could find validity in the prophecies of the Revelation, it would be that much more valuable to him.