The Brotherhood Conspiracy (36 page)

“Is it time for breakfast?”

24

T
HURSDAY
, A
UGUST
20

Dayr al Qiddis Oasis, Egypt

With the notes from the previous afternoon’s research in his left hand, Doc once again scanned the thick, cracked pages of the illuminated manuscript on his room’s table.

“So was it this Temple Guard who first brought the mezuzah to the monastery?”

His body ached. The last time he slept was in the airport hotel in Suez. He didn’t want to count the hours. Throughout the night, Johnson toiled over the larger of the two ancient books—a rambling collection of observances and essays recording various events at the monastery—coaxing clues, fighting for information from its aged secrets while the old man offered slices of the monastery’s history, as if he were unfolding his knowledge, chapter by chapter. Rizzo had long since abandoned their efforts in his need for sleep. But Doc was compelled to continue, to seek the truth of the mezuzah’s history, to search for the clues he hoped were left behind. Sunrise could not be far off, but the old man in the opposite chair showed no sign of weariness. In fact, his mismatched eyes still burned with an intensity that continued to unnerve Johnson and communicated a thinly veiled animosity. As the old man lowered his chin and leaned closer to the table, his stare pierced Johnson’s academic veneer.

“You have some knowledge, but much ignorance,” said the old man, his words like a gloved slap to the cheek—a challenge to the duel.

Johnson laughed in spite of his weariness and unease. “I am certainly grateful
for your assistance this afternoon and tonight, but I don’t believe you know me well enough to call me ignorant.”

The two candles on the hand-hewn table sputtered and flickered, offering no heat and only minimal light inside the small, spartan monk’s cell. From the corners, shadows crept closer to the table.

“Western intellectuals . . . do your universities teach arrogance along with ignorance?”

Johnson placed his right hand on the table and closed the distance between himself and the old man. “Perhaps you mistake confidence for arrogance, but either way, I did not accept your invitation to investigate this book, to have you share some of the history of this monastery, in order to be insulted.”

The old man did not look away, did not waver. But he slightly inclined his head toward Doc, momentarily diffusing the tension that simmered above the table. “Forgive me, good doctor,” he said with slippery sincerity. “There was no offense intended.”

Yellow and brown, the old man’s eyes glowed with a fierce, consuming magnetism, at odds with his bent, frail body. “Perhaps I may still assist you? There is still much that you do not know—but should.” Those eyes, a fanatic’s eyes, disarmed Richard Johnson.

Hungrier for the story than he was unnerved by the Arab’s attitude and intensity, Johnson nodded his head in the old man’s direction. “Perhaps much that you should have told me this afternoon, I think. Please . . . enlighten me.”

“More than nine hundred years ago, some pilgrims came to this monastery. They were part of the great European invasion—
Crusaders
, you call them—those who captured Jerusalem and slaughtered its people. These men were also part of a lay order, the Brotherhood of Saint Anthony. But it is not the pilgrims, or their pilgrimage, that is important to you. Rather, it is what they brought with them—a scroll holder . . . with a message.”

“I knew it!”

“Yes, my good doctor, the same mezuzah and scroll which came into your possession.”

A coil of dread began to wrap itself around Johnson’s heart, like a boa constrictor determined to squeeze the life out of his spirit. “How did you know that?”

“There is much that I know about you, Dr. Johnson . . . and I know much of what you seek to know.”

Another thrust. This one Johnson declined to parry.

“The mezuzah, and scroll it contained, was a great mystery to the Coptic monks who occupied this monastery. They knew it was composed in the ancient Egyptian language of Demotic. But none of them could determine what the message meant. For two hundred years its meaning eluded them. Then a man came and joined the monks of the monastery. A man who loved books, and puzzles. A Coptic . . . and a cryptographer. It took this man five years, poring over the scroll while the other brothers tended the flocks and gardens, before he broke the code and revealed the message.”

Johnson was startled. “You know . . . they knew?”

“You are not the only one to solve this puzzle. The monks of St. Anthony’s Monastery knew for seven hundred years that there was a Jewish temple hidden under the sacred mount in Jerusalem.”

“But . . . why not reveal the secret?”

“Ah, what were they to do? The Umayyad caliphs controlled the land—Egypt, Judea, and Jerusalem. The blessed Haram al-Sharif, the Dome of the Rock, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque were erected six hundred years earlier by the caliph Abd al-Malik. And Jerusalem was over five hundred kilometers distant, through deadly deserts rippling not only with heat, but with ruthless bedouin bandits. Even if these men were released to leave the monastery, it would be a two-month journey. So, instead, they hid the mezuzah and its scroll in a small crypt carved into the foundation of the library building.

“Ultimately, the few brother monks who knew of the mezuzah formed a group of guardians; the Temple Guardians they called themselves. They swore on their faith in the cross of the Nazarene to protect the scroll, its mezuzah, and its message—to keep it a secret until the right moment, the right time to reveal the existence of this hidden temple.”

A chill slipped into the room like a thief, stealing the heat. Johnson shivered and crossed his arms in front of his chest for warmth.

“Over the course of time, this monastery has often been attacked by nomadic bands of raiders. Even after the massive walls were erected, this isolated outpost of Christian heresy remained an inviting target for hungry or greedy bandits. So the monks of the Temple Guardians evolved into a military sect of warrior monks, determined in their defense of the scroll, men who pledged their first allegiance to what became known as the Temple Guard, rather than to the Monastery of St. Anthony. For a time, they succeeded. And the mezuzah remained safe, and secret.”

Johnson’s distrust of the man’s motives increased at the same pace as his interest in the man’s story.
Why is he sharing so much with me?
Distrust prevailed when another man, dressed in the same kaffiyeh and kaftan as the old man, slipped silently through the door and took up a sentry’s post in the shadows of the cell.

“Excuse me! And who are you?” Johnson asked the dark, silent shape.

“Forgive me,” purred the old man, the disdain of the powerful dripping from his words. “My servant. He is concerned about my health and welfare at this late hour.”

It’s my health and welfare that concerns me.

“May I continue?” said the old man, gathering up the folds of his kaftan as he shifted his ancient bones in the chair opposite Johnson. “It is very hard to keep a secret for hundreds of years, passing it down from generation to generation, particularly in a closed community such as this. Eventually, knowledge of the mezuzah and the scroll—most importantly, of its message—came to a man of the desert. A man, I am proud to say, whose bloodline still runs in mine after countless generations.

“No wall could deter that man and his Muslim brothers from rescuing the scroll. Its message was a threat to the Haram al-Sharif. Our holy shrines to the prophet Muhammad were at risk if knowledge of the hidden temple was ever revealed to the world. So these sons of Allah also vowed themselves to a warrior brotherhood—servants of the defiled cross.”

The old man reached inside the neck of his kaftan and withdrew a Coptic cross with a lightning bolt slashing through on the diagonal.

“Defiantly, they called themselves the Prophet’s Guard. With the aid of a faithful brother on the inside, this small army breached the walls and put every warrior monk under the blade during a frenzied battle. There was a little gold, and an abundance of stored food. But what they took back into the desert was the monastery’s greatest prize.”

Johnson’s mind scrambled to put aside its growing apprehension and make order of the new facts with the parts of the story he and the others had uncovered.

“But,” said Johnson, “I thought the Temple Guard brought the mezuzah to the Bibliotheca de Historique in Suez?”

Out in the night a camel bleated into the lonely dark.

“You are mistaken because you possess only partial understanding,” said the old man. “In this hidden corner of the desert, many generations have killed and
pillaged in pursuit of the scroll. Nearly two hundred years ago, it was stolen once more by a reincarnation of the Temple Guard who took the mezuzah to the French for safekeeping, where it was held in great secrecy, where they thought it was safe. But,” he laid something in the folds of his robe and spread his hands, “there are very few secrets that can survive over hundreds of years. Ultimately, my brothers regained possession of the scroll and put it in a place where they believed no one would ever look—in a bookstore along the back alleys of Alexandria. Where a fool allowed it once again to slip from our grasp.”

Johnson ran his mind through the rest of the story—how Charles Spurgeon purchased the mezuzah and its printed silk cover while wandering the streets of Alexandria; how the Prophet’s Guard followed its trail to London; how Spurgeon dispatched the hunted mezuzah to his friend Louis Klopsch at the Bowery Mission in New York City. But an overriding question kept interrupting Johnson’s thoughts.

“But why do you still care? What difference does it make to you, to the Prophet’s Guard, who has the scroll? Not only has the message been deciphered, but the Temple has been found, and destroyed. What good is the scroll to you? Why . . . why are you here?”

The old man’s smile held no warmth, only the promise of violence, a predator playing with his prey. “You do not understand because you possess only partial understanding,” he said again. “It is not only the scroll we seek. In that you are correct. But there is a greater treasure, a treasure of which you have not dreamed.”

Rizzo was on the floor before the sound of the bells registered in his mind. And the floor was probably softer than the bed from which he’d fallen. The world was black and it was several startled moments before he remembered where he was. A monastery in the Egyptian desert in the dead silence of deep night.

He climbed back up into the Egyptian excuse for a bed. Fingering the threadbare blanket, he pushed against the slab of a mattress, and decided he’d endured enough. Early or not, he would go across the corridor. Doc must be awake. Those bells could wake the dead.

Rizzo lit the candle in the holder on the room’s small table and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders against the desert cold. It trailed behind him like
a king’s robe as he pushed open the door and crossed the hall. Candle holder in one hand, the blanket clutched in the other, Rizzo stood at the wooden door to Doc Johnson’s cell, befuddled for a moment by the voices he heard from inside. Clearly, Doc had one of the monks in there, regaling him with stories of the monastery’s history.

Rizzo pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders and headed off down the corridor. He wasn’t going to get any more sleep. Time to do some exploring. Maybe he could find that bucket that lifted people over the walls.

“What treasure?” Johnson tried to stoke his curiosity, but dread dulled his enthusiasm for understanding. “We saw the symbols etched on the surface of the mezuzah,” Johnson protested. “That’s what brought us here. But there was no hint of treasure.”