The 13th Enumeration (16 page)

Chapter 34

Qom, Iran

At the end of November, the Assembly of Experts convened in Qom. Due to the incredible pressure brought to bear by the international community, the assembly was extremely contentious. The entire religious and political leadership of Iran was present. The ruling elite, with entourage in tow, were gathered in tight, animated groups. Here and there military leaders stood watching their political masters like birds of prey. The normally silent voice of opposition to the current leadership was loud and challenging.

Arash raised his voice with those who sought a more moderate form of government. Over the past several years, he had positioned himself as a moderate who wanted a more open and cooperative association with the Western world. He had cultivated a relationship with those in the government of like mind, and now he made his move. As a member of the Assembly of Experts, he openly criticized the current leadership. He called for closer ties with the West and freedom for the people of Iran. He publicly stated it was time for the fanatical regime to step aside.

He knew there were many who agreed with him but were too afraid to say so. They could not believe Arash was making his views public. In their eyes, he had basically signed his death warrant.

Had they known what was about to take place, maybe they too would have had the courage to speak out.

Arash knew he could not run the government of Iran without the help and support of several key figures. Before the assembly convened, he privately went to each of these key government figures and warned them of a possible plot to poison them. He made it seem as if only they were the focus of the plot. He warned them that they should not trust anyone with this knowledge until he had caught the perpetrators. Most of all, he told them not to drink any water they had not brought from their own homes, not even the bottled water.

As he expected, no changes were made in the leadership of the government during the
assembly
. If anything, they decided to take a harder line with the West. Arash knew his days were numbered. But he also knew the days of those who wished to kill him were numbered far shorter than his. All he had to do was stay alive for another week. To that end, he left the assembly on the second day and disappeared.

One week later, news filtered out of Iran that an assassination of some of the key leadership had been carried out. It took several more days before a fuller picture emerged. There were also strange rumors of crazed killers and atrocities so unbelievable they were dismissed. The entire leadership, including the Ayatollah Khamene’i and most of the Assembly of Experts, was killed. Into this political vacuum Arash stepped with his new voice of moderation as he assumed emergency powers to rule Iran. With the help of the key officials he had helped save, he quickly and ruthlessly consolidated his power. He used the confusion surrounding the deaths of the leadership to eliminate all remaining Muslim religious fanatics in any real positions of power. Immediately, he made overtures both public and private with the leaders of the Western world. He called for new elections in four months and requested international observers to ensure a fair outcome.

For decades, Iran’s moderate majority had been ruled by the ruthlessness of a minority. In the months that followed, Arash gradually implemented changes which the people had desperately wanted. When the elections rolled around in March, Arash was elected president by a landslide in one of the first fair elections in Iran since Mohammad Mosaddegh. With the momentum of his victory, Arash had a new constitution drawn up based on democratic principles. Israel was the first nation to publicly announce diplomatic and trade ties with the new democratic Iran. Thereafter, most of the Western world followed suit.

* * *

Darius watched the events in Iran unfold with satisfaction. Arash had carried out the coup perfectly. Iran was now ruled by a son of Hystaspes. If things continued according to plan, in the near future the rest of the world would no longer be under the control of the Order. Darius smiled in anticipation.

Sitting at his desk high atop the Dubai Tower, Darius turned his attention to File 13. He had been too busy the past several weeks to pursue the secret, and he had missed his ritual. Opening the file, he read through several names on the list, smiling momentarily as he passed the name of Isaac Newton. Moving on, Darius selected William Colgate. Colgate had a fascinating history, but more importantly, he’d left behind a symbol. The symbol interested Darius more than the man.

William Colgate was born January 25, 1783. His parents immigrated to America from England in 1798 and settled in Hartford. Colgate became an apprentice soap maker at a young age. After his apprenticeship, he started his own business. His soap company,
William Colgate & Company,
soon became an American household name.
  Today it was known as Colgate-Palmolive.

In 1808, William Colgate was baptized and became a member of the First Baptist Church of New York. Colgate was active in the American Bible Society and later helped found the American and Foreign Bible Society. It was reported that in 1817, the Baptist Education Society was founded by
William Colgate, one of
thirteen men with thirteen dollars
,
thirteen prayers
and thirteen articles
. In 1823, the Baptist Theological Seminary and the Baptist Education Society incorporated and changed their name to the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. William Colgate was one of the trustees. In 1846, the school’s name was changed to Madison University; then in 1890, its name changed again to Colgate University in recognition of the contribution of the Colgate family.

Colgate University was located at 13 Oak Street in Hamilton, New York. Its zip code was 13346 (3 + 4 + 6 = 13). Its senior honor society, Konosioni, was made up of thirteen men and thirteen women. All Colgate alumni were asked to wear Colgate apparel on each Friday the thirteenth.

Darius could not understand why a devout fundamental Baptist Christian was interested in the symbolism of the number thirteen. There was no evidence to suggest that Colgate was part of any organization related to Templar Masonry. In fact, the Baptists were at the forefront of the anti-Masonic movement of the early 1800s. So why then did a Christian fundamentalist have an interest in the number thirteen?

The mystery grew more intriguing the more closely Darius looked. It wasn’t until three years after he first compiled the information on Colgate that Darius learned of the symbol.

In 2000
,
an amateur historian named Alan Solomon
received a call from a friend.
Alan’s friend Dave was fighting the demolition of a property at 211 Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan.  Rockrose Development Corp., founded by three Iranian brothers in 1970, wanted to break Dave’s lease and tear down the building to make way for a new development.   Dave hoped
he could get a historic designation for the building, so he had called his friend.
Alan
Solomon
became engrossed with his research into the history of 211 Pearl Street but it was the esoteric brick symbol on the building which most intrigued him. 
Dave and Alan lost the fight to preserve the building but d
ue to Solom
on’s efforts, the brickwork
symbol
was preserved.

It turned out that t
h
e
building on 211 Pearl Street was one of William Colgate’s most valued properties. Of the seventeen properties in his will, 211 Pearl Street was willed to his children equally with a stipulation that it could not be sold for fifteen years. The symbolic brickwork
on the building
had baffled investigators for the past ten years.
They had even started calling it the “American Da Vinci Code”.
No one seemed to be able to come up with a definitive explanation as to its meaning. Darius had tried to figure out the puzzle
himself
but so far had been unable to solve it. He had counted and numbered the bricks in every way he could think of.
The only thing he had noticed was
the number thirteen was prominent in the design. This combined with Colgate’s history and his involvement in the founding of Colgate University told Darius there was something here, but what? Darius couldn’t say why, but he felt that this symbolic brickwork might be a clue to the Order’s secret. But why was it hidden on the building of a fundamentalist Christian?

Darius took one last look at the pict
ure of the symbol
and then closed the file. While everything was going according to plan with his invention, he was admittedly frustrated with the slow pace of his search for the secret. But he was getting closer, of that he was sure. He wasn’t about to give up now.

Chapter 35

Capernaum, Israel

Rachael Neumann was busy making preparations for the Capernaum dig. Over the winter months she had gradually increased her exercise routine until she regained the strength in her leg. Her one great concern over the past several weeks was that she would be kicked off the archeology team because she was not able to handle her responsibilities. She received no special treatment because of her father. She was too proud and her father too honest. She had earned her position on the archeology team by her dedication, hard work, and persistence.

Her father had placed Efran Finkelstein in charge of this dig, and while he was a capable administrator, she did not particularly like him. He always seemed to be waiting for something. He did just enough to get by without making any waves as he climbed the system’s ladder of success. Efran was a person who put his finger to the air to see which way the wind was blowing before he would make a decision. He was pushed to the top, not because he was the best choice, but because he made the fewest enemies along the way.

Most of all, she didn’t like Efran because her intuition told her he was a man who capitalized on the efforts of others. She was a champion of men like her father, men rough around the edges, strong and straightforward, men of honor, men who spoke little but did much. Efran was a weak, Machiavellian schemer with great flattering words and little deeds. They had come to an unspoken truce of sorts. Not willing to cause her father any undue grief, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes open. Efran, wary of the director’s daughter, watched and waited.

* * *

Distracted, the Baker descended the wooden stairs to the basement under his bakery. Crossing the floor, he entered the secret room behind the shelf and turned on the battery charger. His sister had refused to move the wedding, so he had to leave tonight. What could he do? She was his only sister, and their father was dead. He truly loved her, but she could be obstinate sometimes.

He would just have to risk leaving the magnet on. The new batch of messages was due tonight. The crude electromagnet was in a safe place, it had never given him any problems, and . . . what was he worrying about anyway? Nothing was going to happen. He would be back in five days, and they would not know he had been gone.

Turning off the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, the Baker closed the door to the secret room. Climbing the stairs out of the basement, he locked the door behind him. He placed a sign in the window, locked the front door, and left for his sister’s wedding in Jordan.

* * *

The following evening, half a mile away and a hundred feet higher in elevation, Miriam Rosenfeld lay on the couch talking to her mother on the phone. The frustrated young mother had finally solved her mouse problem. The steel wool had worked: it had taken only one box, just like her friend had said. The remaining boxes Miriam had placed in the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom.

Little Jesse, toddling now, made his way into the bathroom while his mother was distracted. To Jesse, the bathroom was one of the most exciting places in the house. He loved his bath and little bath toys. Just a few days ago he had discovered the toilet handle. To his delight, whenever he pulled on it, rushing water would come into the toilet bowl and swirl around and around and disappear down the small hole at the bottom.

He knew he was not supposed to be in the bathroom, but he could not help himself. On this day he found the bathroom cabinet door open slightly. With his chubby fingers, he opened it further and found all sorts of interesting and unusual things to explore.

After a few minutes, Jesse found the steel wool. Pulling it out from its little packages like he had seen his mother do, his one-and-a-half-year-old brain had the inspired idea to see what would happen if he put the steel wool in the toilet and pulled on the handle.

For the next thirty minutes, to his unmitigated rapture, little Jesse pulled steel wool out of its packages and watched with fascination as it disappeared down the toilet every time he flushed. By some miracle he never threw so many in that they stopped up the toilet. Finally, as he was in the act of tossing the last steel wool ball into the toilet, his mother found him in the midst of the open and empty packaging strewn all over the bathroom floor.

Jesse looked up into his mother’s face with such innocent joy that her scolding look melted into an expression of motherly love, and she just shook her head and softly laughed. There was nothing she could do about it now anyway. If the toilet got stopped up, so be it—she would just call the plumber. Picking up the torn and scattered pieces of packaging, she gently told Jesse that he was never to throw anything down the toilet again. Closing the cabinet door, she pulled on it to make sure the safety lock had engaged; then, holding little Jesse’s hand, she closed the bathroom door behind them.

Unbeknownst to Miriam and Jesse, those little steel wool balls were on a journey which would ultimately save the lives of millions of people.