The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (21 page)

Joe shook his head. “When I was growing up in Washington Heights, the Dominican kids on the corner would call you
jablador
.”

“Ha … blah … door? Does that mean handsome?” Rizzo was still pacing, headed across the living room.

“Not quite. To be kind, let’s just say it means somebody who stretches the truth, just a little.”

“Yeah, okay.” Rizzo spun on his heel to face Joe. “But how much more obtuse does Elgar’s secret code need to be? Elgar didn’t write this cipher just because he didn’t have the
New York Times
crossword to keep him busy.”

He started pacing the room again, his hands twirling like a windmill. “Would Elgar spend so much time perfecting a code so intricate, clever, and impenetrable that it’s never been broken and then simply put it in a birthday card to the schoolgirl daughter of a preacher in the English countryside? No. The Dorabella Cipher must be hiding something—something that Elgar and Spurgeon knew they wanted to keep secret, and a secret that was
not
the existence of a Temple under Temple Mount.”

Counterbalancing Rizzo’s animated gyrations, Joe sprawled out on the sofa, lifting his long legs onto the cushions. “Okay. Let’s say the cipher does have a role to play. But what is it? And how would we know? Just like you said, people have been trying to crack the Dorabella Cipher for over a hundred years with no success. What are we going to learn from it? What does it matter?”

“Look, dragon breath, what if it does matter—what if it matters in some way we don’t understand yet?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. The codex spent time in Alexandria, the same place Spurgeon picked up the mezuzah and scroll. Could it be possible that Spurgeon had a chance to see the codex while they were in Egypt?”

“No, the codex was in Aleppo by then, long gone from Egypt. You think Elgar and Spurgeon went looking for the staff?”

“I don’t know what I think.”

“I’ll say
amen
to that.”

Rizzo stopped his pacing, walked over to the sofa, and stood eye-to-eye with Rodriguez. “What I was going to say is I don’t know what I think about Spurgeon and Elgar looking for the staff. But what I do think is that Elgar and Spurgeon figured it out—the whole shooting match. They discovered Abiathar’s scroll. They realized the power of Aaron’s staff, and I think they probably discovered the location of the garden.”

Rodriguez pushed himself up into a sitting position, his face a puzzle. “But how could a couple of old guys like Spurgeon and Elgar travel from Egypt to Babylon? Alexandria, they take a ship. Babylon, they’ve gotta cross over six hundred miles of desert?”

“They wouldn’t have had to. Maybe they talked to somebody who did.”

“Like who?”

“Sir Charles Warren.” Rizzo felt the wicked smile rise on his cheeks as he watched the thoughts and emotions move like flashcards across Rodriguez’s face. “You’re not the only nerd who knows how to use the library.”

7:00 p.m.

Joining the people entering the Ades Synagogue, Bohannon took one of the yarmulkes from the basket by the door as Annie covered her head with the shawl she had brought. It was just before sunset, when the synagogue began its Sabbath-ending evening service of Syrian Hazzanut, the Middle Eastern–style Jewish liturgical singing that was one of the unique features of Ades services.

Entering the vestibule, Tom and Annie turned to the right. Bohannon was concerned to see the elder Rabbi Asher waiting by the stairs to the lower level.

“You have come just in time,” said Rabbi Asher. “Once the service begins, the doors are closed and entrance is denied. Come. Let me get you established before the service begins. I need to be in place.”

They descended the stairs with alacrity and entered the
gniza
that Rabbi Asher unlocked for them. He moved to the table in the front section, ignoring the long rows of wooden shelves containing the collected Torah scrolls of the synagogue that stretched away for thirty yards in the building’s basement. They joined the rabbi in donning the white cotton gloves resting on the table and watched as Asher unlocked the metal box containing the synagogue’s copy of the Aleppo Codex, lowered it like fragile treasure, and opened to the book of Jeremiah.

“I must go to the service, so please keep notes. If you have questions, my nephew will come to help you read the notations and answer your questions. I don’t know what secret you are hoping to discover, but I wish you good fortune.”

With that the rabbi pivoted and exited as quickly as he had entered. When he was gone, Tom turned to Annie.

“Now what? Where do we start? Where do we look for Jeremiah’s secret—the entrance to the garden?”

A cold current of air passed across the back of Tom’s neck, causing a chill to run down his spine. The room filled with the intoxicating smell of exotic spices, accompanied by the distant sound of bells and trumpets, which segued into a voice.

“Perhaps I can assist you with your search?”

To Tom’s right, an audible
ooohhh
drifted from Annie’s mouth. He could see why. From between the stacks emerged a young man of such extraordinary beauty Bohannon had to look closely to make sure it wasn’t a woman. The young man’s skin was unusually pale, and his bright green eyes were surrounded by waves of black curls. He moved with the grace of a dancer, but the muscles under his shirt belonged to a wrestler.

“I’ve been sent to help you,” the young man said.

The rabbi’s nephew looked nothing like him.

Annie turned toward the book and caressed the page with her gloved hand, running her finger over the beautifully wrought Hebrew letters. “We’re trying to understand more about the notations around the book of Jeremiah.”

“Ah, yes,” said the young man, his words reverberating under the low ceiling, “but I don’t think we start with Jeremiah. I think we start with Daniel.”

Bohannon was surprised, and showed it by the quick snap of his head in the young man’s direction. “But Jeremiah—”

“Yes. Jeremiah is important. But what you may not know is that when Jeremiah arrived in Babylon, about 594 BC, Daniel and the prophet Ezekiel were already in the city, having been taken captive earlier by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem three times; the final time, in 587 BC, he was so enraged by Zedekiah’s rebellion that he decreed the city be completely destroyed. Daniel was one of the Hebrew hostages deported to Babylon the first time in 605.

“Daniel rose in rank and stature while in captivity and served three Babylonian kings—Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus. He was known by the name Belshazzar and was highly exalted and very powerful in spite of his Hebrew heritage. He rose to the position of chancellor under Nebuchadnezzar, second in power only to the emperor. He knew everything the king knew.”

The young man’s voice was clear and firm, softly modulated.
He could have a career in public speaking.

“Daniel interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, which helped him rise in the king’s court, but he also had visions himself, three of which were interpreted for Daniel by a man dressed in linen, with a belt of finest gold around his waist—a man identified as the angel Gabriel, who stands in God’s presence. Two points you should know—first, in the first year of Darius, Daniel received a vision of Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian captivity by ‘reading the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet,’ a vision that was interpreted for Daniel by Gabriel. And, second, in the book of Enoch, also in Jewish mythology, even in John Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
Gabriel is identified as the ruler, or governor, over both the garden of Eden and the cherubim who guard its gates.

“I believe,” said the young man, moving to the table and putting on a pair of gloves, “if you wish to find the entrance to the garden of Eden, you should look first at the Masoretic notes surrounding the book of Daniel.”

As he turned the pages from Jeremiah, past Lamentations and Ezekiel, Annie came to his side. “How do you know what we’re looking for?” she asked, her eyes narrowed and her voice on edge.

“I was told. Here, this is what I sought.”

Tom watched as the young man looked at Annie, so close to his side, with a tenderness that made Tom blush and envious at the same time.

“May I read to you?” The young man’s voice spun in the air like an invitation to a dance, light and melodic.

Annie’s eyes questioned, but softened.

“Here,” said the young man, “in the book of Daniel, is the third time the angel visited with the prophet. Prior to explaining to Daniel what will happen to the Jewish captives in the future—‘a time yet to come’—the man identified as the angel Gabriel says that he was dispatched to Daniel on the first day of Daniel’s prayers, but that he was resisted by the prince of the Persian kingdom for twenty-one days. ‘Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me because I was detained there with the king of Persia.’”

The young man moved his gloved hand to the top of the page and the notations at the top of the column of letters. “Our learned scholars wrote this as explanation, here at the top of the page and continuing at the bottom:

Bohannon’s head was spinning, entranced by the young man’s voice and confounded by the words he read. “What does it mean?”

The young man stepped away from the book and walked to the other side of the table, facing Tom and Annie.

“In the book of Jeremiah he writes about the things in the Temple of God, ‘For this is what the Lord Almighty says about the pillars, the bronze Sea, the movable stands and the other articles that are left in this city … “They will be taken to Babylon and there they will remain until the day I come for them,” declares the Lord. “Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.”’

“You are concerned,” he said, “about why God would want to bring Aaron’s staff from the garden, where it has been safeguarded for nearly three thousand years. You are anxious that those who seek its power could capture it.”

Annie gestured toward the young man. “How do you know these things?”

The young man placed both hands on the table. “What do you think this has been about from the beginning? If God wants to protect the staff of Aaron for another three thousand years by leaving it in the garden, don’t you think he can do that? Even if men like the Prophet’s Guard or the Muslim Brotherhood think they can find it and use it, is it too much for God to put a stop to their plans? Is his arm too short? And if you bring it out, do you think he is incapable of protecting it in the very world he himself created?”

The young man turned his attention to Tom and leaned into the table. “But you, man of God, have been called to a task. You don’t understand why. People called by God seldom understand why. But clearly God knows why. And there is a purpose here. Think of all the wisdom, hidden wisdom, that has been imparted to you in the last several months, the codes and secret messages that unfolded before your eyes: Abiathar’s scroll and that journey under Temple Mount to the Third Temple of God; Jeremiah’s long path of clues to the place where he had hidden the Tent of Meeting; discerning the hidden mysteries of the Aleppo Codex and its message about Aaron’s staff. And you found the two, interlocking sprockets with a message that could not have been translated until recently when the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute completed its forty-year project to create a Demotic dictionary.”

Annie continued to shake her head. “But, wait. Where have you gotten this information?”

The young man did not slow down.

“Think of the opposition you have encountered and overcome: ancient, secret societies searching for the same information; incredibly powerful men, organizations, and governments who wanted to stop you; murderous attempts on your lives and the lives of your families.”

He moved from the far side of the table and approached Tom and Annie. He placed a hand on each of their shoulders and sent a current of warmth along the ridge of Tom’s shoulders. His eyes seemed to refract light from some internal source—peaceful and calming in one respect but bursting with life and promise in another.

“You, Tom, and your team have traveled over three continents and transcended each of these obstacles. And now you find yourselves in an old Syrian synagogue, in the spiritual center of the world, searching for the staff of power from the hand of God. And after all that has gone before—after all of this—you still wonder if searching for Aaron’s staff is the right thing to do?

“Then allow me to tell you a story. The Creator of all things placed the stars in the sky before the beginning of time. The planets, the solar systems, the billions of galaxies all move as a perfect celestial clock—you can precisely chart their movements back in time or forward into the future. We look to Daniel, not Jeremiah, because Daniel was a wise man who became a teacher of wise men in Babylon, where a wise man was called a magus. Daniel was the teacher of the magi. It was Daniel who taught the magi to watch for the sign in the sky, the confluence of Jupiter and Venus that formed the brightest
star
the heavens had ever produced. And it was Daniel who plotted the sky of the Bethlehem Star five hundred years before that night occurred, and used that celestial structure to protect the staff of God until the day God called it forth once more.”

The young man removed his hand from Annie and put both hands on Tom’s shoulders. The room began to darken at its edges and close in on Tom. He was compelled to keep his gaze locked on the hypnotic green eyes. “Those God calls, Tom, he always equips and enables. God has equipped you to uncover all these secrets and enabled you to understand their meaning. You are, actually, on a mission
for
God, not from God.