The Brotherhood Conspiracy (8 page)

Johnson steadied the cup in his hands. “I’m sorry, Brandon, I don’t understand. What can you mean, triumph?”

McDonough crossed the carpet and picked up his own coffee mug. “Richard, I truly understand your grief, because an Irishman has an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains him through temporary periods of joy. But, believe me, this should be a time of joy.

“What was Abiathar’s purpose . . . his father’s purpose? What did they intend to achieve?” McDonough asked, perching himself on the edge of his chair. “They wanted to restore ritual sacrifice in the Temple of God, either on, or in, the mountain of God. This priest, Abiathar, he and his father and scores of others put their lives at risk, for many years. Such excruciating work, in such
difficult circumstances, was it not? Do you think, after all they endured—twice exiled from Jerusalem, years laboring in the bowels of the earth, eating and breathing limestone dust, praying over their brothers buried under collapsed tunnels—after all that, do you truly believe this Abiathar would leave the existence of a Third Temple simply to chance? To the chance that his message would travel hundreds of kilometers, through Christian and Muslim armies, and come to rest in the hands of the one man who could read it? What, honestly, are the odds of that happening in 1099? Are you with me there, love?”

The designs in the Persian rug began to swim before Johnson’s eyes, a mirror image of the confusion in his mind.

“Richard . . . tell me, son, how closely did you examine the outside of the mezuzah? The container which held the scroll for so many years . . . how closely was it inspected, eh?”

“What are you talking about?” The words came out like a rebuke. “We were interested in the scroll, in its language and structure, in its message,” snapped Johnson. “What of the mezuzah?”

“Richard, ancient mezuzahs were often inscribed on the outside with messages of equal importance to the scroll within.

“What was Abiathar’s Plan B?” he asked. “Surely, these men would have had alternatives in play. What if the Temple under the Mount was never found? It appears Abiathar’s message never reached the man in Egypt to whom it was sent. Is this the only message he would send? Or, more likely, what if his temple was destroyed by some earthquake or flood or other natural disaster? What would they have done then? Just give up? I think not, Richard. Me sainted mother used to say, ‘Brandon, you’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind.’ This was a man of action. He would not have simply shrugged his shoulders and hoped. What else did Abiathar try to tell us? Are there other messages, besides the one on the scroll?”

Johnson pinched the edge of the cloth and peeled away the flaps of acid-free cotton embracing the metal tube. There was little light inside the vault of the Collector’s Club, but enough to reflect off the bronze surface and snag the glint in McDonough’s eyes. He watched as his colleague’s face shifted through a gamut of expressions . . . wonder coming back again and again.

“Is it inside?”

Johnson turned within the vault and reached over to a wide, thin, stainless steel drawer. The drawer slid open silently. “No, we didn’t want to roll it again once we got back to the States.” Johnson lifted the drawer off its soft rollers and placed it on the table alongside the mezuzah. He flipped a catch and opened the stainless steel lid against the hinges on its back rim. “We’re all concerned, not just for its safety but also about the effects of our weather on the scroll itself. This vault was designed to preserve the precious stamps that fill these drawers. No moisture. No humidity. Temperature controlled.” Johnson lifted the thin tissue paper covering, exposing the scroll to low light. He stepped back.

An inhale caught in McDonough’s throat as his left hand came up and clutched the lapel of his jacket. “Holy Mother of God . . . ’tis beautiful,” he whispered. “Wonderfully preserved.”

“Ha!” Johnson leaned back against the inside of the vault. “You would have been appalled at the way we treated this treasure in the tunnels under the Temple Mount. Carrying it around like a letter to Uncle Phil. We swam across an underground lake with it; can you believe that? It’s only dumb luck that kept it from being destroyed.”

“Or, perhaps a spot of divine intervention?”

“What?”

“Nothing . . . nothing, my boy. A slip of the tongue, ’tis all,” said McDonough. “The letters are beautiful, eh? Artfully sculpted. So much more defined than those on the Rosetta Stone. An amazing find. And this,” he said, pointing to a small circle at the bottom of the leftmost column, “this is the mark of the high priest?”

“Yes,” said Johnson, joining his friend at the side of the table. Johnson rested his right hand on McDonough’s left shoulder and leaned over the table. “It’s hard to see with the naked eye, but inside the circle are two Phoenician letters,
aleph
and
resh
—the hallmark of Abiathar, high priest of the Jewish community that first fled from Jerusalem to Tyre when the Seljuk Turks captured the Holy City. Abiathar . . . builder of the hidden Third Temple under the Temple Mount and author of this coded scroll.”

McDonough turned his hand over and ran a fingernail lovingly over the aged parchment. “He must have been quite a resourceful man, this Abiathar.”

Returning the scroll to its hermetically sealed new home, Johnson picked up the rewrapped mezuzah from the table. “Let’s go up to my office. We’ll be more comfortable and have more light to see if our friend Abiathar left us anything else.”

Back on the fifth floor, Johnson stalled at the threshold to his office, as he had so many times since his return from Jerusalem. The workmen had completed the job admirably. The bow window overlooking 35th Street was not only repaired, but was now restored to the elegance envisioned in Stanford White’s original design. The scars on the room’s walls and woodwork, caused by the blast, were plastered and painted or repaired. But the scars on Johnson’s heart were livid and throbbing with hurt. He loved Winthrop Larsen like a son. Like many fathers, Johnson grieved at the words he never said. Winthrop’s body was gone, torn to shreds by the bombers of the Prophet’s Guard, but his memory lived within these walls. With a reverent sadness, Johnson stepped across the threshold and into his place of grief.

“We’ll have good light by the window,” said Johnson. He crossed to a large table, up on its edge like a drafting table, various arms flayed out to its sides. Johnson pulled out a spring-loaded dowel and lowered the face of the table to a horizontal plane. Placing the wrapped mezuzah on the table, he reached for one of the hinged, metal arms and pulled a bright light over the table surface.

Johnson motioned McDonough to a high stool, but the scholar was oblivious to the gesture. His eyes were riveted to the bronze cylinder on the table. Pressed against the side of the table, McDonough stretched out his right hand and traced some of the etched designs in the air above the mezuzah.

“Now, let’s see what you have to say for yourself.”

McDonough pulled down one of the metal arms attached to the sides of the table, the one suspending a powerful magnifying glass surrounded by a high-lumen lamp. He carefully positioned the magnifying glass over the bronze mezuzah and switched on the lamp.

As Johnson watched McDonough caress the cold metal tube as if wooing a lover-to-be, his heart warmed. The memory of many long hours in the caverns of the British Museum flashed across Johnson’s consciousness, he and McDonough working together as they tried to pry secrets from cold stone or inhospitable metal. Those were happier times, times when—

“Where do you think the mezuzah originated?” asked McDonough. “In Jerusalem or in Egypt?”

Johnson felt his mind cloud over. It was a question he hadn’t considered, one apparently without an answer. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“Do you recognize this?” McDonough asked as he swung the magnifying glass around so Johnson could observe what he had discovered.

Johnson turned his head to the right, bewildered by what he saw. “Is that a
tau
?”

The tau, an ancient Egyptian symbol of truth—the symbol pressed against the lips of each Pharaoh when a king was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries—looked like the letter
T
, or like three pieces of a Templar’s cross with the top, vertical piece missing.

“Yes . . . three, side by side. But, what is that beside the taus?” asked McDonough.

A small circle beside the three tau symbols, a circle containing two letters—aleph and resh, Abiathar’s signature. “Well . . . I’ll be . . .”

“Yes, you are,” said McDonough. “But that’s not the point. Your friend Abiathar was communicating with a compatriot in Egypt, was he not?”

Johnson’s mind began to focus. “Yes . . . Meborak, the Exilarch of Egypt, was his ally in a plan to overthrow a usurper to the leadership of the Egyptian Jewish community.”

Johnson stepped away from the table and crossed to the bay window overlooking 35th Street. “It was this mezuzah, with the scroll message inside, that Abiathar sent to Meborak for safekeeping.” Johnson turned his back to the window and faced the room. “But we also discovered there were other, earlier messages between Abiathar and Meborak . . . messages that originally created the Demotic language code that Abiathar used in the scroll’s cipher. So, it’s really not that strange that we would find an Egyptian symbol connected with Abiathar’s hallmark.”

“Perhaps,” said McDonough, resting against a stool. “But, why would Abiathar combine his signature with an ancient, pagan symbol like the tau when he could have used any number of other symbols . . . symbols from the Torah? Even if they were concerned about keeping their little conspiracy a secret, why select the tau?”

Without warning, Johnson’s innate curiosity was overrun by a rising surge of anger. He felt it, but couldn’t stop it. Slamming his hand onto the drafting table, his voice erupted. “This . . . this is what Winthrop died for?” He made a fist and slammed it again on the table. “Playing stupid children’s games of hide-and-seek . . . solve the puzzle . . . win the prize.”

Johnson grabbed onto the edge of the table like a vise clamp, steadying himself as he brought his voice under control. “There’s no prize here, Brandon,” he whispered. “Just silly men, playing stupid children’s games . . . games that cost the best of us his life. Who cares? Who really cares what the stupid thing means?”

Johnson stared blindly at the mezuzah. He felt McDonough’s hand upon his shoulder.

“Richard, with the first message, you discovered the Third Temple of God, an event that I believe has changed the course of history.”

Johnson tried to close his heart against the words.
No. It wasn’t worth it.

“Finding Abiathar’s hallmark on the surface of the mezuzah, I’ll wager there must be a second message here, a different message that Abiathar tried to communicate through the symbols on this mezuzah?”

I can’t. I can’t. It’s my fault that Winthrop is dead. I killed him just as surely as if I placed the bomb in his van. No more. I can’t take it. I couldn’t bear it if someone else were hurt . . . someone else were killed . . . just because I wanted to follow the thrill of the chase. No . . . I can’t.

“Richard.” The voice was soft, pleading, close to his ear. “This message was meant to be found. Whatever it is, Abiathar’s purpose was that someone—this Meborak most likely—would find it and understand it. Richard . . . now that the door of the mezuzah has been opened . . . if you and your friends don’t discover its meaning, others will. Others who may not be so—”

“But, what if someone else is injured, or killed?” Johnson shook his head, slowly, back and forth. “I don’t think I could survive.”