The Brotherhood Conspiracy (33 page)

“The Europeans were butchers and brigands,” Barkawi lamented. “They reveled in the annihilation of Islamic culture almost as much as they rejoiced over the death of every Muslim martyr. But Tripoli was a stronghold that did not break easily. It took ten years of siege to finally breach the walls and take the city. During that time, many of the city’s treasures were smuggled out of Tripoli to safekeeping. There is a library in the city of Baakleen, on the southwestern slope of the Shouf Mountains, on the route to Damascus. The library was established a decade before the Crusaders arrived and it was small enough to be overlooked by the ravenous Europeans.”

Barkawi crossed his office and stood in front of a large map of Lebanon. “It’s still there today,” he said, pointing to a spot in the mountains southeast of Beirut. “It’s the national library of Lebanon. It’s possible your mysterious book may be waiting on the shelves of the Baakleen Library.”

Rodriguez shot a look at Tom, then turned again to Barkawi. “How would we get there?”

In spite of his well-cut suit and air of importance, Barkawi reminded Rodriguez of a fast-talker on the streets of Washington Heights. Perhaps it was the smirk with the hint of malevolence. Perhaps it was the attitude of one who thinks he knows more than you and is about to use that knowledge to your disadvantage. Joe knew he was being scammed.

“Oh, I don’t think ‘we’ will be going anywhere,” said Barkawi. “Because there is a second possibility that is just as likely as the Baakleen.” He twisted at the waist to look back at the map, his thumb tapping at a point in the desert, northeast of Lebanon. “Your book could also be here, at the Krak de Chevaliers, the greatest Crusader castle of the time. Before the Dar al-Ilm was obliterated, Bertrand, son of Raymond St. Gilles, commander of the Crusaders, ransacked
the great library and carried away many of its treasures to the Crusader fortress. A library remains there to this day. Your book may also be gathering dust in this great castle.”

Joe looked at the point on the map that Barkawi was tapping and shook his head. “But . . . that’s in Syria.”

“Yes, I know,” said Barkawi. “And the two of you were just in Israel recently, weren’t you?” A greasy smile smeared across his face. “Did you know that no one with an Israeli visa on their passport, or with plans to travel to Israel, is allowed entrance into Syria? And the Baakleen is closed, except to academics . . . by appointment. It so happens that one of my cousins is in charge of making appointments at the Baakleen . . . and my uncle is secretary of visas and passports for the immigration department in Syria . . .”

Joe felt the hook. He knew what was coming.

“Perhaps my assistance will be worth more than fifteen percent after all,” said Barkawi.

Barkawi stood motionless at the large window, looking down into Rahbat Street as the taxi containing Rodriguez and Bohannon pulled into the uncontrolled mayhem of Tripoli traffic. The veneer of welcome disappeared as soon as they departed his office.

He pulled the acrid, Turkish cigarette from his full lips and flung it at the window toward the image of the taxi’s retreating taillights. His eyes were burning, black pits. He moved with measured malice, a jungle cat smelling blood. Ignoring the smoldering butt and the ash stain on the window, he turned back to his desk and opened a small drawer on the right side. From the drawer he pulled a mobile telephone.

“
Salaam
, Defender of the Faith,” he said, reverence scenting his words. “They are on their way . . . the tall one to Baakleen, the leader to Krak de Chevaliers. Yes, I arranged it all myself. The tall one will be under the knives of your black-clad messengers. And the leader—if he finds anything—it will soon be in our hands.”

Barkawi listened to the voice on the other end of the line as he pulled something else from the desk drawer . . . an amulet—a Coptic cross with a lightning bolt slashing across on the diagonal. “Yes, Holy One, we will not fail.”

“The Baakleen Library is a wild-goose chase,” said Rodriguez.

They were standing in a corner of the Tripoli bus station, attempting to avoid the maelstrom of bodies, odors, and raucous noises that swirled across the geometrically colored mosaic floor. “I’ve heard of that library. There was an ancient Baakleen Library, as Barkawi said, but it was destroyed by an earthquake centuries ago. The current Baakleen is the Lebanese national library. It’s housed in a former prison. But it wasn’t opened as a library until 1987. It’s not a bad library, but there’s no chance that any ancient documents from a thousand years ago are housed in the Baakleen. It’s just not possible. That’s not the Baakleen’s purpose.”

A gnawing sense of discomfort roiled in Joe’s stomach. Bohannon was trying to decipher the bus schedule from Tripoli to Syria. Joe put a hand on his arm.

“Tom . . . why would Barkawi point us to Baakleen?” he asked. Bohannon looked up.

“What?”

“Barkawi is as trustworthy as a picket-fence canoe.”

“What?”

Rodriguez squeezed Bohannon’s arm in frustrated urgency.

“Look, the guy would know the Baakleen. He knows what’s in there. And he knows sending one of us there is a waste of our time.”

The perplexity on Bohannon’s face vanished. “So why would he do it?”

“I don’t know. But I think we have to assume we’re in enemy territory here,” said Joe. “Maybe he has allegiances to people who don’t want us to succeed.”

“The Guard?”

Rodriguez shrugged.

“Maybe we should just get out of here,” said Bohannon.

Leaning against the wall of the bus station, Joe said, “Only one problem with that. He was right about the Krak. If the Crusaders plundered the Dar al-Ilm before destroying it, if Abiathar planted anything there—and it still exists—the most likely place to look would be that fortress. That was the Crusader stronghold, their storehouse for anything valuable.” Shutting out the riot of noise around them, Joe focused on his brother-in-law. “I think we need to go to the Krak.”

“But . . . if the Baakleen was a bum steer . . .”

“Then somebody could be waiting for us at either location. Going to that castle is a risk . . . if Barkawi is setting us up.”

“And,” said Bohannon, “Barkawi is as trustworthy as—what did you say, a picket-fence canoe? You’re weird, Joe. Okay, doesn’t matter. We’ve got to try. Look, we also need to check out Jeremiah’s Grotto in Jerusalem, right? So I’ll go to the fortress and you get to Jerusalem.”

“I don’t like that idea.” Joe’s dread spiked. “The last thing we should do is split up.”

“You’re right,” said Bohannon. “It’s probably not a good idea. But time’s running out on us already. We need to move fast.”

Joe felt waves of anxiety wash over his body. He pushed off the wall and got right in front of Tom’s face. “Wait a minute, Tom. I promised you I would walk with you through this . . . what? . . . assignment? . . . and I’m not going anywhere without you. And you shouldn’t be going anywhere without me. Who’s going to watch your back if I’m not there? No . . . I don’t like the way this is going. We have to stay together.”

Tom’s hand found Joe’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “We haven’t found anything yet and the clock keeps ticking. We have too much ground to cover and not enough time to get it done. You know it doesn’t make a lot of sense for both of us to go to the castle. I’ll be okay. You get to Jerusalem.” Tom moved closer to his brother-in-law and Joe felt the strength of his resolve. “And keep your eyes open.”

County Meath, Ireland

It was the four tractors stacked on top of one another, sitting by the side of the road outside the village of Rathbeggan, that yanked Brandon McDonough’s attention from daydreams about the secret of the mezuzah to the traffic on N3.
Better keep your mind and eyes on the road
. It had been a long flight.

Brilliant days like this one were rare in Ireland. A scorching blue sky hung over the green landscape, punctuating each color with an exclamation point as McDonough drove from the Dublin airport to Cairn T at Loughcrew. It was the kind of day that made you want to walk barefoot across the patchwork fields of green, feeling the moistness of the ground and the cool caress from each blade of grass.

But there would be no stops this day. Not to marvel at the four tractors
stacked to the sky, nor to take a detour to visit the hill of Tara—one of the seats of power of ancient Ireland—nor to investigate the medieval tower that soared into the blue sky from the winding, history-laden streets of Kells.

Brandon McDonough was on a mission and neither the glorious weather nor his native curiosity could deter him. There was a legend waiting for him and he would not be late for his appointment with history.

On the flight from New York, McDonough reviewed the websites claiming that Cairn T—a five-thousand-year-old passage tomb commanding a hilltop in the County Meath countryside—was the burial place of the prophet Jeremiah. Five hundred years older than the pyramids of Egypt, one thousand years older than Stonehenge, Cairn T was one of three passage tombs located on this hill just outside the village of Loughcrew. And it was the most mysterious.

Not uncommon in Ireland, passage tombs were large mounds of stone and earth, typically erected on the highest hill in a region, containing a long central passage that opened into a cross-shaped burial chamber, off of which were three smaller chambers. The most famous of the ancient Irish passage tombs was Newgrange, a massive, megalithic mound about fifteen kilometers to the east of Loughcrew, a place of legend and fancy.

Compared to Newgrange, Cairn T in Loughcrew was a historical backwater. Where Newgrange had a visitors’ center, guided tours, and strict rules and supervision, the cairns at Loughcrew were generally ignored and abandoned by both tourists and locals. In fact, in order for McDonough to gain access to Cairn T, all he needed was to arrive at the rustic coffee shop of the nineteenth-century Loughcrew Gardens, surrender his driver’s license as security for the key to the tombs, and let himself in. No guards, no admission fee—no eyes to follow his search.

One of the websites he studied while on the plane claimed it could prove that Cairn T was the final resting place of the prophet Jeremiah. The cairn was also referred to as the tomb of the Ollamh Fodhla in Irish history, a title that in both Hebrew and Irish means possessor or revealer of hidden knowledge. The website’s author took the Neolithic carvings on several of the stones inside the cairn—particularly those on what he identified as the “journey stone” and the tablet-shaped “end stone” which caught the first rays of the sun on the solstice—and used those images to spin the tale of Jeremiah’s journey from Egypt to Gibraltar and on to Ireland. It was an ingenious interpretation, one that could be filled with fancy or fact. It was McDonough’s mission to find out
which. And, if true, to see if Cairn T contained any clue that would connect it to the story of Jeremiah and the Tent of Meeting.

A mission unlikely to bear fruit. But for a man who spent most of his life buried in a book or wandering the lonely storage caverns of the British Museum, a mission of flesh and blood, of urgency and expectation. And not a mission of detours.

Driving toward the junction at Oldcastle, McDonough was once again visited by a sense of dread. It happened first on his flight from New York. On the airplane, McDonough couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes were always on him. He chalked it up to residual anxiety brought on by close proximity to Richard Johnson and his colleagues, who appeared to be the targets of a ruthless band of killers. Hearing of their near-death experiences would scare the starch out of any man.