The Book of Names (23 page)

The ancient practices Eduardo had gradually revealed to her had stirred something deep inside her, broken it loose and given it permission to grow.

Every week as she and Eduardo sipped the drug-laced liqueur that enhanced their spiritual state while they meditated, she found herself more deeply connected to the Source of her soul.

And more eager to challenge the Source's cruel subordinate deity—the demiurge—whom their people believed
created all flesh and matter, ensnaring the souls that yearned to float free. Eduardo had freed her from the obsequiousness of conventional religion. Now, along with the elite of her sect, she was only hours away from liberating her inner spirit from this deceptive, oppressive, and evil world.

Ironic, she thought, as she reached the bottom of the staircase, that the Ascension would take place so deep underground.

She surveyed the mammoth reception area, knowing that neither stone, nor bedrock, nor steel could entomb their souls once the world was cracked in two.

God destroyed his world the first time with the Flood. Now it was the Gnoseos' turn.

SAFED

“Sorry,” the male voice taunted in David's ear. “Your little girl can't come to the phone right now.”

He felt the blood draining from his face. “Who is this? Where's my daughter?”

“You know who this is, David,” the man mocked. “You have something that belongs to me. And I have something that belongs to you.”

David did know then. He didn't know how, but in the same way that the names had always come to him, this one did, too.

Crispin Mueller.

“What do you want, Mueller?”

He heard a savage laugh. The line beeped once and went dead.

“What's going on?” Yael gripped his arm as David stared openmouthed at the phone.

“Mueller has Stacy,” he croaked. “And I don't know where. The bastard hung up on me.”

Furiously, he entered Stacy's phone number. His body felt like a block of ice as a busy signal bleated into his ear.

There was no doubt now. Crispin was a Gnoseos.

And Stacy
. . .
Stacy is a Lamed Vovnik. Just like the others in my journal.

He was numb. Numb with shock and the realization that Yael and her father were right. The Gnoseos were destroying the world.

What if they'd killed Stacy already? Panic pounded in his chest.

No. Crispin will keep her alive
—
until he gets the gemstone. Until I bring it to him.

Yael seemed to read his mind.

“He's playing with you,” she said quickly. “He won't hurt her, David, not until he gets what he wants. But you can't—”

“Give the stone back to him? Why can't I?” Rage surged through him now. He grabbed the gold chai at his neck, his fist clenching around it so tightly the metal pierced his palm.

“Isn't life the most important thing? Isn't that what your father told me? Well, a child's life is most important of all.”

“But the entire world, David?” Yosef asked, his hands spreading in an encompassing gesture. His face was ashen, but his tone was stern. “Is one child's life more important than that?”

“She's a Lamed Vovnik.” David wheeled toward him. “If I save her life—just
her
life—I'll save the world. Isn't that what you said?”

His hands shook as he opened his phone again. “We saw Mueller in London. I'm going there tonight on the first flight I can catch. You can keep my journal,” he told Yael. He grabbed it from inside his duffel and shoved it at her, ignoring the pain etched across her face. “Go ahead—study it, tear it apart. Do whatever the hell you want with it. You don't need me for that.”

He waved his phone in the air. “How do I reach El Al? Tell me the number.”

“David, come inside.” Yosef spoke in a measured tone. “We'll make the reservation for you, but you need to think this through. Things are coming to a head. And quickly.”

Staring from father to daughter, David couldn't believe the two of them didn't understand the bond that was driving him.

A million ugly visions collided in his head.

What happened to Hutch? To Meredith? Are they both dead?

Unable to deal with the nightmarish images, he pushed past Yael and her father, shouldering his way inside the Center.

A blast of cool air struck him as he bounded into the wide, sunlit foyer tiled in almond-flecked linoleum. Suddenly an old whisper seemed to echo in his ears.

The mountain only
seems
insurmountable.

David froze.

Hutch's voice, calm and encouraging at the base of Granite Mountain.
You climb it the same way you eat a T-bone, buddy
—
slice off one piece at a time, and never more than you can chew in one bite.

A strange, forced calmness flowed over him, the same kind of forced calm he'd faked during his first few climbs with Hutch. Faked until the fear tearing up his gut was replaced by confidence. Taking deep breaths the way Hutch had taught him, he tried to let the simple clarity drown out his rage.

From the periphery of his hearing, he caught the sound of Yael's voice. She was calling the airline.

And Crispin Mueller is calling the shots.

David slipped the two gemstones from his pocket and studied them, ignoring Yosef as the older man brushed
past him to speak to several men who'd come into the hall from nearby rooms.

The agate and the amber felt heavier in his palm now—and the light dancing off the cabachons hurt his eyes. He closed his fist around their brilliance, and thrust them back in his pocket.

I followed Crispin's lead once. Acted on impulse. I don't have to do it his way again.

This time
, David thought,
I'll trust my own footing. And take care where I step.

 

“What do you mean, all flights are grounded?” David stifled the impulse to grab the phone from Yael's hand.

“You don't believe me? You're welcome to try to convince El Al to fly during a security alert. Frankly, I doubt you will be successful.”

David took a deep breath.
Rein it in
, he told himself.

“What kind of security alert?” he asked.

“Iran might be preparing to launch a nuclear attack.” Her voice was tinged with fear. “Let's get to the television.”

They hurried toward the Center's staff lounge, a room lined with long tables covered with paper linens, red chairs flanking them. It looked like any school lunchroom, but for the large screen television mounted on the back wall. They joined Yosef, watching the screen intently along with a dozen or so grim-faced, silent Israelis.

“They're blaming the United States and Israel for last week's tanker explosion at the port of Deyyer,” a small-boned woman whose eyeglasses dangled from a chain around her neck told Yael.

David stiffened. The announcer was reporting that casualties now numbered three hundred. Had it been just days ago that he'd watched the television footage at the
airport on the way to New York? He felt as if an eon had passed since he'd left D.C.

“And for this accident,” a rotund leather-faced Israeli grumbled, “millions of innocent people should die? We need a miracle,” he added fervently, under his breath.

“Rabbi, this is the man who might be able to provide that miracle.” Ten heads swiveled from the television toward Yosef Olinsky. Ten pairs of eyes watched him put a hand on David's shoulder. “This is David Shepherd, Rabbi Cardoza. He has come to Safed with his journal and with two precious stones from the breastplate of our
Cohen Gadol.”

As a collective gasp went around the room, Yael watched the tension twitch a muscle along David's jaw. She knew he felt trapped. She knew he felt helpless to save his child.

“Work with us, David,” she implored quietly, as the rabbi came toward them extending a hand. “Right now, it's the only way you can help Stacy. As soon as the airport reopens, I promise you, you're free to leave. But for now, we need not only your journal. We need
you.
There may be other knowledge hidden within your brain. This is the city—the one city—where you need to be. For Stacy's sake—for the remaining Lamed Vovniks. For the world.”

What choice do I have?
David thought. Despair compounded his sense of helplessness, but he knew she was right.

He looked straight at the leather-faced rabbi, a man not much older than he, and grasped his outstretched palm. “Where do we start?” he asked tersely.

 

As they passed through the immense computer laboratory on the top level, Rabbi Cardoza gave David a short introduction to the Gabrieli Kabbalah Center.

“This is where we study the papyri fragments that have been validated by the Antiquities Authority,” he said, breathing hard from the climb up. “After the archaeologists uncover them, the Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem authenticates and dates them—then we scan digital copies into the computers to search them for hidden messages from
HaShem.”

“David is a secular Jew, Rabbi,” Yael interrupted. “He may not be aware of the many names of God—such as HaShem—or of their power.”

More names? Why am I not surprised?
David thought. “And how many are there?” he asked aloud.

“Seventy-two,” she answered without missing a beat.
“HaShem, Adonai, Elohim
are some of the more common ones. The
Shekhinah
is the name of God's feminine presence in the world. The mystics meditate upon each Holy Name, one at a time, picturing each in its Hebrew form.”

Rabbi Cardoza smiled approvingly at Yael. “You've learned a great deal in your time here, I see.”

He turned to David. “As mystics, we also believe that the entire Torah—with all the spaces between the words deleted—spells another of God's names.”

“Unpronounceable, I assume?” David muttered.

The rabbi cocked an eyebrow at him, but refrained from answering. They passed through a large glass door to enter the library. Flanked by an expanse of arched windows, skullcapped men sat poring over photocopies of parchment sections spread like floating continents across long oak study tables. Others studied stacks of computer printouts on tables piled with books.

This is where they matched the names in my journal to the names they've already found in their fragments
, David realized.

“You'll meet Binyomin and Rafi later,” Rabbi Cardoza said, waving him forward to a secluded study nook. “But first we start in here. You saw the many books on our shelves. But there is only one I would very much like to examine right now.”

Cardoza pulled a chair from a round table stacked with several piles of printouts and a dozen freshly sharpened pencils. “May I see your journal, David?”

David glanced toward Yael, and she handed the journal over.

Pulling his glasses from a breast pocket, Rabbi Cardoza lowered himself heavily into a chair. “Sit, everyone. Make yourselves comfortable. We have much to discuss and very little time.”

Page by page, he thumbed through the journal, quickly comparing it against a printout he pulled from the top of the stack.
What is he looking for?
David wondered, chafing with impatience.

Minutes went by, and still the rabbi bent over the journal, immersed in the names. By the time he finally snapped the book closed and peeled his glasses from his face, David felt ready to bolt. But Cardoza's next words kept him pinned in his seat.

“This journal may be even more significant than Rabbi ben Moshe thought.”

Startled, Yosef leaned forward, his brows darting together. Yael didn't move, but drew in one surprised breath.

“How?” David demanded. “Have you found the missing names?”

“No, we'll need to feed the entire contents of your journal into the computer for that. However, on first glance I see something curious about the way the names have come to you, Professor—”

“David. Please.”

“David, then. On all of the duplicate fragments we've uncovered, the names are always listed in the same order. Yours are not. So, why are those in your journal written in a
different
order than those hidden in Adam's Book of Names? Perhaps,” he held the book aloft, “your journal holds the key to a breakthrough we desperately need.”

“You think there might be an encoded message in David's book,” Yael whispered excitedly. Cardoza rested his hands across his stomach and nodded.

“I believe the names came to David in
this
order for a reason. They were revealed to him en masse during his mystical vision for a specific purpose—to give him the names of the Lamed Vovniks so they could be saved. But I believe the
order
in which he was told these names contains another message. A message David has not yet accessed.”

All eyes turned toward David. He felt the pressure on his shoulders grow heavier.

“How do I access it, Rabbi? Since time is so short, maybe you can give me a hint, put me in a trance, something.”

“If only it were as easy as that.” Cardoza sighed. “You're not a mathematician, neither am I. But mathematics is exactly what has led to the decoding of our sacred Torah—the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Here at the Gabrieli Kabbalah Center, we apply the same kinds of computer programs Israeli scientists use to search the Torah. Except here, we are using them to extract the names of the Lamed Vovniks written in code within Adam's Book of Names.”

David nodded, remembering Rabbi ben Moshe's description of the book passed down from Adam through his sons, through countless generations, until it was lost. . .

Rabbi Cardoza continued. “For even though Adam wrote the names of all creatures, the names of the Lamed Vovniks were buried within the text so their identities would be concealed—”