The Brotherhood Conspiracy (28 page)

“Someone chasing you, Baruch?”

Geshur leaned heavily on his spear, his shield absently propped against the portal of the gate.
Soon, he will not be so careless
. “I . . . I”—Baruch reached for breath—“thought there was someone . . . in the darkness . . .” The scroll suddenly felt like a boulder under his cloak.

“Your master is sleeping.”

“More misery for me, then.” Baruch raised a limp hand in farewell. He crossed the courtyard of the guard, the sweat on his brow stinging in the cold. The sour aroma of unwashed bodies and human waste assaulted him as he approached the guardhouse. Baruch passed the open door to the duty room, where oil lamps still burned brightly, and approached a small, wooden door bathed in shadow.

He hesitated at the threshold, then inched open the door as if it were made of water waiting to spill at the slightest quiver. Brittle in the cold, the leather hinges snapped in the silence.

A stirring in the dark heralded the rebuke. “Why have you come to disturb my sleep?” The rasping rattle of his voice had deepened in this place. “Have an urgent purpose, or leave as you came.”

Closing the door behind him, Baruch leaned against the wood.

“The king is throwing his lot with Hophra.”

“Egyptian swine,” rasped the voice in the darkness. “And Hamutal has a fool for a pup. He has decreed a death sentence for all of us. You are certain?”

“Zedekiah will not pay tribute this year. His messenger left tonight. I was in the stables.” Baruch waited, but no answer came.

He crossed the dirt floor, found the oil lamp, and took it to the hearth. He dug out an ember, ignited a rush, and lit the wick. Baruch placed the oil lamp back on the solitary table and turned to face his master.

Jeremiah looked all of his seventy years. His tunic hung from his bony shoulders as he creaked into a sitting position. Head hanging limp, stringy white hair falling over his face, Jeremiah coaxed one leg, then the other, off the bed and placed his feet on the floor.

Baruch had worried about his master’s health for many months. Perhaps not in prison, but confined nonetheless in the courtyard of the guards, Jeremiah was withering under this sentence. The once flaming spirit was dimmer each day.

A whisper rose from Jeremiah’s chest. “Nebuchadnezzar will crush this city under his heel. He will leave nothing standing this time.”

Then, a miracle.

Before his eyes, Baruch watched a transformation in the aged priest and prophet, burdened and bruised by so many years of opposition, his conscience rubbed raw by the unfettered idolatry of his people. Baruch saw life put on Jeremiah’s bones like a new cloak. His spine straightened. He pushed his hair and his shoulders back into place. The fire in his eyes, long banked embers, glowed brightly once more.

“Zedekiah is a dead man,” said Jeremiah, sitting on the edge of his bed. “The Babylonians will come soon. It is time for us to move, my son.”

Jeremiah turned his face to Baruch. His skin looked like the dry wadis in the desert, deeply gouged and pulled tight over his sharp chin and beaked nose. But a new resolve pulsed just under the surface.

“Call together the Korahites . . . and the house of Hilkiah,” he said. “We must begin to build the carts and platforms. Have the priests come to me. We can no longer hide the dwelling place of the Lord in this city. It is no longer safe. Soon, Jerusalem will be only ashes and dust.”

Jeremiah lifted his right hand and pointed at Baruch—a hand suddenly strong and steady. “And the scroll, Baruch. We need to change the scroll. Somehow you must convince . . .”

Baruch reached under his cloak with his right hand, withdrew the scroll from the pit of his left arm, and held out the bronze cylinder to his master. “Yes, master . . . I already have.”

He handed the mezuzah to Jeremiah. “Make the changes now,” said the old man. “Rewrite the scroll. Should anything happen to me, you know the plan. Tell the scribes the dwelling place of the Lord rests with Moses.”

S
UMMER
, 586
BC

So many bodies littered the streets, Baruch couldn’t run. Even if he had the strength.

Fireballs fell from the sky. The entire Second District was ablaze. Siege engines pounded on the walls at the northern end of Jerusalem, the city’s most vulnerable side, the place where invaders always attacked. Nebuchadnezzar’s two-and-a-half year siege would end tonight.

There was no water in Jerusalem for so long, that there were no tears to accompany the wailing of the wasted bodies that stumbled along the street. Famine was so pervasive, many of the poor souls trapped in the city were reduced to eating their own waste. Some fed on their children.

Baruch struggled on, sick in body and spirit. As he reached the courtyard of the guard, he could hear the tumult of hand-to-hand combat near the Fish Gate. The Babylonians had finally broken through.

There was no guard at the gate. The courtyard was quiet and empty, except for the old man sitting on the steps to the palace.

“Zedekiah has deserted the city.” Baruch’s voice echoed as he crossed the courtyard. “He and his royal guard fled through the gate near the king’s garden. They are trying for the Arabah.”

Baruch sat down heavily beside Jeremiah.

“Zedekiah’s fate is sealed. Ours is not,” said Jeremiah. “We may be subject to the whims of this Chaldean butcher, but we remain in the hands of the Lord. And remember, my son, we have fulfilled the will of the Lord. We have spoken the word of God to these idolaters in the house of Judah . . . you have written down those words . . . and we have ensured the safety of the Lord’s dwelling place.”

Jeremiah had a distant, troubled look on his face. Baruch thought his master was in pain. “My father, are you . . .”

“Did you replace the scroll?”

“Yes, master.”

“Then it is safe. Only you and I, and the line of Aaron, know the truth.”

The sounds of battle, and the screams of those being slain, were coming closer. Burning flesh scented the fetid air. Baruch lamented his fear. Jeremiah’s hand, light as the wing of a dove, rested on Baruch’s shoulder. “Be still, my son. Remember, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’”

“Do you really think the Shema will protect us against the swords of Babylon?”

Baruch felt the old man’s hand on his hair. His heart fluttered, his breath caught in his throat, and his chin quivered as he turned to the man he had served for so many years.

“We recite the Shema Yisrael morning and evening,” said Jeremiah, his words barely carrying above the clamor closing on the streets around the palace. “It is the most important part of our prayers . . . our last words. There is nothing after the Shema, nothing except faith.” A peaceful smile cracked the creases of Jeremiah’s face, a surpassing peace. “Have faith, my son.”

A clattering came from the area around the gate, wresting Baruch’s attention from his master’s face. He turned to his right. Striding across the courtyard was a tall, muscular, bearded man, bronze armor covering his chest, silver helmet on his head . . . blood dripping from his drawn sword.

20

S
UNDAY
, A
UGUST
16 (C
ONTINUED
)

New York City

Joe Rodriguez stood in front of the portable whiteboard, now covered with notes and questions arranged in four general columns. Looking at the board, a combustible mixture of fear and exhilaration raced through Rodriguez’s body, rippling nervously over his spine. He had built a notable career as an expert in electronic library science, emerging from an educationally ambitious Puerto Rican family in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan to a position of responsibility and authority in the New York City library system. Not only did Rodriguez oversee the material and operations of the Periodicals Room in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Bryant Park, but he had also built an international reputation as a visionary with his two books on the cyber information revolution sweeping through the world’s greatest libraries.

But scrape away all the sheen and Joe Rodriguez was still only a librarian. In the library, his boundless energy and New York attitude often felt confined. An athlete in his youth, still lean and muscular with long arms, his intense brown eyes and relentless gait shimmered with restrained power. He was an inmate of the marble floors and richly ornamented rooms of New York City’s most famous library—an uneasy inmate now that adventure once again collided with his quiet, measured life.

Rodriguez looked at the symbols on the whiteboard and his spirit heard hypnotic songs of mystery, discovery . . . and danger . . . like a drug, once experienced, now luring him into temptation.

He took a breath and shook his head, then turned to the world map covering
a large corkboard on the far wall of his office. He picked four pushpins from his desk drawer and stepped in front of the map.

“Tripoli, in Lebanon—Abiathar’s destination after the fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders.”

He pushed in a second pin. “Mount Nebo, in Jordan—according to the Bible, the place where the prophet Jeremiah hid the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant in a cave.”

Rodriguez traced a meridian south. “The Monastery of St. Anthony, the oldest inhabited monastery in the world, in the eastern desert of the Sahara, deep in the Red Sea wilderness.”

“And, lastly.” Rodriguez traced his finger northeast over the map, and settled on a small island, where he inserted his last pushpin. “County Meath in Ireland . . . according to the good Dr. McDonough, the legendary tomb of Jeremiah.”

Joe turned back toward the others sitting in his office, sweeping his left arm in the direction of the four pins on the map. “Quite an assortment of locations, or possibilities,” he said.

“Well, there is another,” said McDonough. “If one of you gentlemen happen to return to Jerusalem, below the hill of Golgotha, outside the walls of the Old City, is Jeremiah’s Grotto. Tradition—legend?—holds that this is where the prophet Jeremiah was held prisoner by King Zedekiah and where he wrote the book of Lamentations. Having been underfoot of tourist traffic for hundreds of years, I doubt the Tent could be hidden in Jeremiah’s Grotto. But perhaps a clue?”

A smile crept onto Joe Rodriguez’s face and the crinkly lines at the corners of his mouth charted the rapid beating of his heart. “So . . . now what?”

“I don’t know about you, but I need a break,” said Rizzo, hopping off his chair and heading to the door. “How about we start with lunch?”

Doc Johnson balanced the remnants of a roast beef on rye as if it were a fragile shard of Egyptian pottery. “Gentlemen, please, before we wander any further down these wispy threads of conjuring . . . I know and understand the thrill, the adrenaline rush, of the hunt for hidden treasures. Yes, I feel its tug myself. But, can one of you tell me why we should even entertain the possibility of rejoining the arena of international conflict?”

The peppery sweet aroma of hot pastrami floated in the air of Joe’s office, barely masking the brackish scent of growing anxiety.

Bohannon wiped his fingers on a well-used napkin. “Well, Doc, I told you—”

“Yes, I know. The president thinks we might find some clue to the location of the Tent. The president has the full force of the military, the FBI, the CIA, and God knows how many clandestine strike forces, at the snap of his fingers. Why can’t the most powerful government on earth inspect these four locations? Why should we risk our lives again?”

Tom was losing his patience with Doc. “Why?” he said. “First, because Whitestone asked—the president of the United States, remember? Second, he got the Israelis to back off and allow Kallie back into the country. And, third, we’re in the same predicament now that we were in two months ago . . . the guys with the amulets know who we are, where we are, and what we’ve got. And they want it back. And they want
us
erased from the equation. It’s simple, Doc. We’re in this whether we like it or not.

“I know
I
don’t like it. If it were my choice, I wouldn’t consider getting involved. But, Doc, I think my family and I are safer if we cooperate with the most powerful man on earth, than if we tell him to shove off, we don’t care about the fate of the world. So, I’m going to help—even though I’m not crazy about it. What you do is up to you.”

21