Alexandria Link (38 page)

Hermann stopped reading and stared up at the vice president. “Jerome wrote this to Augustine while he was translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to Latin. Let me read you what Augustine, at one point, wrote to Jerome.”

He found another of the translations.

My learned brother, your work seems both arduous and glorious. How amazing it must be to reveal what scribes gone for so long have recorded and all with the divine guidance of our most glorious God. You are certainly aware of the struggles that we all endure in this most dangerous of times. The pagan gods are dying away. The message of Christ is growing. His words of peace, mercy, and love ring true. Many are discovering our new message simply because it is be coming available. Which makes your effort to bring to life the old words that much more important. Your letters clearly explained the problem you are facing. Yet the future of this church, of our God, rests with us. To adapt the message of the old with that of the new is not a sin. As you have said, the words possess many double meanings, so who is to say which is right? Certainly not you or I. You asked for guidance, so I shall give it. Make the old words true to the new. For if the old be different from the new, we surely will be at risk of confusing the faithful and fueling the fires of discontent, which our many enemies keep burning. Yours is a great task. To be able for all to read the old words will mean much. No longer will scholars and rabbis possess control over so important a text. So my brother, work hard and be well knowing that you are doing the work of the Lord.

“You’re saying they intentionally changed the Old Testament?” the vice president asked.

“Of course they did. Just this reference to Jerusalem is a good example. Jerome’s translation, which is still accepted as correct today, denotes Jerusalem as a city. Jerome’s Kings reads, Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen. That’s absolutely contrary to what Jerome himself wrote in the letter. Jerusalem, the city/capital that I have chosen in it. Huge difference, wouldn’t you say? And this description of Jerusalem is used throughout Jerome’s translation. The Jerusalem of the Old Testament became the city in Palestine because Jerome made it so.”

“This is crazy, Alfred. Nobody’s going to buy any of it.”

“It’s not necessary that anyone buy it. Once the proof is found, there will be no denying.”

“Like what?”

“An Old Testament manuscript penned before Christ should be definitive. Then we can read the words without the Christian filter.”

“I wish you luck.”

“Tell you what. I’ll leave the governing of America to you and you leave this to me.”

THORVALDSEN WATCHED AS HERMANN REPLACED THE SHEETS into the display case and closed the compartment. The two men lingered for a few minutes, then left the library. The hour was late, but he wasn’t sleepy.

“They’re going to kill the president,” Gary said nervously.

“I know. Come, we need to leave.”

They descended the spiral staircase.

Lamps still burned in the library. He recalled how Hermann liked to boast that there were some twenty-five thousand books, many first editions dating back hundreds of years.

He led Gary to the case containing the codex. The boy hadn’t seen what he had. He reached beneath and searched for a switch, but felt nothing. Bending down would be difficult. One of the handicaps of a crooked spine.

“What are you looking for?” Gary asked.

“There’s a way to open this case. Have a look and see if there’s a button underneath.”

Gary dropped to his knees and searched.

“I doubt if it will be obvious.” He alternated his attention from the case to the door, hoping no one came inside. “Anything?”

A click, and the case separated slightly about one-third of the way down its length.

Gary stood. “One of the screws. Pretty neat. Unless you poke it, you’d never know.”

“Good job.”

He revealed the hidden compartment and saw the stiff sheets of papyrus with writing from edge to edge. He counted. Nine. He stared around at the bookshelves and spied some oversized atlases. He pointed, “Bring me one of those large books.”

Gary retrieved a volume. Carefully he slid the papyri and translations into the pages to both conceal and protect them.

He reclosed the case.

“What are those?” Gary asked.

“What we came for, I hope.”

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7

9:15 AM

MALONE LEANED BACK AGAINST THE BULKHEAD IN THE CAVERNOUS C130H transport. Brent Green had worked fast, hitching them a ride on an air force supply flight out of England bound for Afghanistan. A stop in Lisbon at the Montijo Air Base, supposedly for a minor repair, had allowed them to board with little fanfare. A change of clothes had awaited them; Malone, Pam, and McCollum now sported army combat uniforms in varying shades of beige, green, and brown, along with desert boots and parachutes. Pam had been apprehensive about the chute, but accepted his explanation that it was standard equipment.

The flight time from Lisbon to the Sinai was eight hours and he’d managed a little sleep. He recalled with no affection other flights on other transports, and the pall of oily jet fuel that hung in the air brought back memories of when he was younger. Staying away far more than being home. Making mistakes that hurt him even now.

Pam had clearly not liked the first three hours of the flight. Understandable, given that comfort was the least of the air force’s concerns. But finally she’d settled down and fallen asleep.

McCollum was another matter.

He’d seemed right at home, donning his parachute with expert precision. Perhaps he was ex–special forces. Malone hadn’t heard from Green as to McCollum’s background. But whatever was learned would soon be of little consequence. They were about to be out of touch, in the middle of nowhere.

He stared out the window.

Dusty, barren soil stretched in every direction, an irregular tableland, tilting ever upward as the Sinai Peninsula narrowed and erupted into craggy brown, gray, and red granite mountains. The Burning Bush and the theophany of Jehovah all supposedly occurred down there. The great and terrible wilderness of Exodus. Monks and hermits for centuries had chosen it as their refuge, as if being alone brought them closer to heaven. Perhaps it did. He was curiously reminded of Sartre’s Huis Clos vision.

Hell is other people.

He turned from the window and watched McCollum leave the loadmaster and walk toward him, taking a seat on the aluminum frame that stretched across the bulkhead. Pam lay ten feet away, on the opposite side, still sleeping. Malone was eating one of the meals ready to eat—beefsteak with mushrooms—and drinking bottled water.

“You eat?” he asked McCollum.

“While you were sleeping. Chicken fajitas. Not bad. I remember MREs all too well.”

“You do look at home.”

“Been here, done this.”

They’d both removed their earplugs, which provided only minor insulation from the constant drone of the engines. The aircraft was loaded with pallets of vehicle parts destined for Afghanistan. Malone imagined that there were many similar flights each week. Where once supply routes depended on horses, wagons, and trucks, now the sky and sea offered the fastest and safest routes.

“You look like you’ve been here, too,” McCollum said.

“Does bring back some things.”

He was watching his words. Didn’t matter that McCollum had helped get them out of Belém in one piece. He remained an unknown. And he killed with expert precision and no remorse. His redeeming quality? He held the hero’s quest.

“You’ve got some pretty good connections,” McCollum said. “The attorney general himself arranged this?”

“I do have friends.”

“You’re either CIA, military intelligence, or something along that line.”

“None of the above. I’m actually retired.”

McCollum chuckled. “You keep that story. I like it. Retired. Right. You’re up to your eyeballs in something.”

He finished the meal and noticed the loadmaster eyeing him. He recalled that they could get touchy as to how MREs were trashed. The man motioned and Malone understood. The container at the far end of the bench.

The loadmaster then flashed his open palm four times.

Twenty minutes.

He nodded.

VIENNA

8:30 AM

THORVALDSEN SAT INSIDE THE SCHMETTERLINGHAUS AND OPENED the atlas. He and Gary had awoken an hour ago, showered, and eaten a light breakfast. He’d come to the butterfly house not only to avoid the electronic listening devices, but to await the inevitable as well. Only a matter of time before Hermann discovered the theft.

Morning was free time for the members, as the next gathering of the Assembly was not scheduled until late afternoon. He’d kept the parchments inside the atlas beneath his bed all night. Now he was anxious to learn more. Though he could read Latin, his Greek was minimal, and his knowledge of Old Greek, which surely would be the language of Jerome and Augustine, was nonexistent. He was thankful that Hermann had commissioned the translations.

Gary sat across from him in another chair. “You said last night these may be what we came for.”

He decided the boy deserved the truth. “You were kidnapped so as to force your father to find something he hid away years ago. I think that and these papers are linked.”

“What are they?”

“Letters between two learned men. Augustine and Jerome. They lived in the fourth and fifth centuries and helped formulate the Christian religion.”

“History. I’m starting to like it and all, but there’s so much to it.”

Henrik smiled. “And the problem today is we have so few documents from that time. Wars, politics, time, and abuse have devastated the record. But here are writings straight from the minds of two learned men.”

He knew something about both. Augustine was born in Africa to a Christian mother and a pagan father. Eventually, as an adult, he converted to Christianity and recorded his youthful excesses in The Confessions, a book Thorvaldsen knew was still required reading at most universities. He became the bishop of Hippo, an intellectual leader of African Catholicism, and a powerful advocate for orthodoxy; he was credited with formulating much of the church’s early thinking.

Jerome, too, was born to a pagan family and misspent his youth. He was also learned, and came to be regarded as the most intellectual of all the church fathers. He lived as a hermit and devoted thirty years of his life to translating the Bible. Ever since, he’d been associated with libraries, so much so that he became their patron saint.

From the little that Thorvaldsen had overheard last night, these two men, who lived in differing parts of the ancient world, apparently communicated with each other during a time when Jerome was fashioning his lifework. Hermann had made his point to the vice president about biblical manipulation, but he needed to understand the situation fully. So he found the translation pages and started perusing them, reading the English passages out loud.

My learned brother Augustine, there was a time when I believed the Septuagint to be a wondrous work. I read that text in the library at Alexandria. To hear the thoughts of those scribes, as they recounted the troubles of the Israelites, brought to life the faith that had long filled my soul. But this joy has now been replaced with confusion. In my work to convert the old text it is clear that great liberties were taken in the Septuagint. Passage after passage is not correct. Jerusalem is not a single place, but a region that contains many places. That most sacred of rivers the Jordan is not a river, but a mountain escarpment. As to the names of places, most are wrong. The Greek translation does not conform to the Hebrew. It is as if the entire message was altered, not through ignorance, but design.

Jerome, my friend, yours is a difficult task, made even more so by our great mission. What you have discovered has not gone unnoticed. I, too, have spent a great deal of time in the library at Alexandria. Many of us have perused the manuscripts. I read an account from Herodotus, who visited Palestine in the fifth century before our Lord. He found the area under Persian rule inhabited by Syrians. He noticed no Israelite or Jewish presence. No Jerusalem or Judah. I found that remarkable considering the old text mentions that was the time when the Jewish Temple was being rebuilt in Jerusalem and Judah enjoyed the status of a great province. If these had existed, the learned Greek would have noticed, as he carries the reputation of an ardent observer. I found that the first known identification of ancient Israel with what we call Palestine comes from the Roman, Strabo. His Histories is a thorough account, and I was privileged to read it in the library. Strabo’s work was completed twenty-three years after our Lord was born, so he wrote at a time when Christ actually lived. He notes that the name Judea was first applied to Palestine during Greek rule, the Greek word for a Jewish country being Ioudaia. That was only a century before the birth of our Lord. So sometime between the visits of Herodotus and Strabo, some four hundred years apart, the Jews of Palestine established a presence. Strabo himself wrote of a large body of Israelites who fled from a land to the south and settled in Palestine. He was not clear as to which land, but he reasoned that, given the proximity of Egypt and its easy access, the Exodus must have occurred from there to Palestine. But nothing proves that conclusion. Strabo noted that the source of his tale was the Jews of Alexandria, among whom he spent much time. He was fluent in Hebrew and noted in his Histories that he, too, found errors in the Septuagint. He wrote that the scholars at the library of Alexandria, who translated the old text into Greek, simply connected the old text to what they learned from the Jews at that time. Strabo wrote that the Jews of Alexandria had forgotten their past and seemed comfortable creating one.

My learned brother Augustine, I have read the writings of Flavius Josephus, a Jew who wrote with great authority. He lived a century after our Lord was born. He clearly identifies Palestine with the land in the old text, noting that the region is the only place he knew where a Jewish political entity existed. Of a more recent time, Eusebius of Caesaria, on behalf of our most exalted emperor Constantine, has designated names from the old text to sites in Palestine. I have read his work On the Names of Places in Holy Scripture. But after studying a text of the old text in Hebrew, it is clear that Eusebius’s work is flawed. He seems to have loosely applied meanings to place-names and in some cases simply guessed, yet this work carries a great importance. Pious and credulous pilgrims use it as their guide.