Authors: Michael Byrnes
This caused both men to push back their stools and spring into action.
The laborer’s eyes widened as he saw them darting his way—particularly the tall one, a giant of a man. He coiled into himself. “I’ll drink tea if it’ll make ya ’appy!” he said, cowering.
But the two paid him no mind as they whisked by, rounded the corner of the counter, and disappeared through the door.
It was easy for Orlando to see that the rear room was meant for storage: it was filled with dried goods and cans lined neatly on shelves, and stock glassware. There was a large walk-in refrigerator to one side, its door open wide. “Check it,” he said.
Kwiatkowski reached it in three strides and poked his head in. Lining the floor and shelves were crates of milk and eggs, cases of soda and beer, bins of cheeses, wrapped meats, and butter. No Donovan. “Not here.”
Then just outside a solid metal door in the room’s rear, they both heard the muffled sounds of an engine coming to life.
Donovan had considered blocking the door with something, but in the narrow alley, there was only a large Dumpster that wasn’t budging. Hopping onto his motorcycle, he jammed the key into its ignition and started it up, forgoing the helmet in the rear stow box. He pulled back on the throttle just as the door swung open behind him.
The cold V-twin sputtered before yanking the Kawasaki Vulcan forward with a squeal of rubber. Donovan shot a glimpse over his shoulder and spotted the two men dressed as priests scrambling out the doorway and into the alley—each brandishing a handgun.
Donovan’s eyes shot forward, sharpening on the opening ahead—a good fifty meters, nothing but brick wall corralling him on both sides.
An easy target for a straight shot.
Pressing his chest down against the fuel tank, he cranked the throttle to the max and serpentined the bike as best he could, trying to avoid skidding out on the rain-slicked pavement. The first shot ricocheted low off the wall in front of him. A second punctured the exhaust pipe and made the bike produce an ear-numbing grumble. Clearly the men could shoot. But they didn’t seem to be aiming directly at him. Were they attempting to blow out a tire?
In a panic, Donovan made a split-second correction to maneuver around a pothole that caught the rear tire. The Kawasaki jerked hard and forced him close to the wall just as a third shot nearly grazed his calf and pinged off the chrome engine block. Another five meters and he gripped the brakes and skidded out into the roadway, leaning right to force a wide turn. In the process, he clipped the bumper of an oncoming truck, whose horn was blaring.
The bike slid hard to the opposing curb, forcing Donovan to throw out his leg to keep from rolling into an older woman who was walking her poodle. The muffler’s throaty rumbling covered her shouted obscenities as he pulled the bike upright and raced away.
Jerusalem, Israel
Descending the precipitous steps from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, Rabbi Aaron Cohen gazed over at the fortified Temple Mount complex, which covered thirty-five acres of Mount Moriah’s summit like an artificial mesa with its huge filled rectangle of retaining walls, parapets, and embankments. A second, lesser platform rose up from the Temple Mount’s center to support the shrine that had dominated the site since the late seventh century—an elaborate building with a massive gold cupola perched upon an octagonal base of marble and colorful Arabian tiles.
The Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-most-holy shrine.
And when Cohen’s eyes defied him and caught a glimpse of it, he cringed severely. He muttered a prayer to suppress the deep-rooted emotions that surged every time he thought of the grand Jewish temple that once graced the world’s most hallowed hilltop. The feelings of loss and insult came in equal measure.
At the bottom of the steps, he made his way to the security checkpoint for the Western Wall Plaza. As always, he set off the metal detector. Casually stepping aside, he held up his arms. The young IDF soldier, dressed in olive fatigues and beret with an Uzi slung casually over his left shoulder, shook his head as he got up from his stool. He grabbed a black security wand off the bag scanner. “
Shalom,
Rabbi.”
“
Shalom,
Yakob.”
The soldier lackadaisically ran the handheld metal detector over the Hasid’s limbs and torso. As always, it let out a high-pitched screech along the left thigh and hip. Sighing, the guard discreetly patted the area to confirm nothing was there. “No way to get rid of that stuff, Rabbi?” he asked with a polite smile as he rounded back to his stool.
“Not if I want to keep walking.” Cohen shook his head. “Better get used to it.”
The deeply embedded shrapnel was a physical reminder of the suicide bombings at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market that left sixteen dead and dozens more wounded, including Cohen, who’d stood mere meters away from the
shaheed
’s detonation. Despite four surgeries and five months at Hadassah Medical Center, nails and pellet-shaped metal remained where surgical extraction would guarantee paralysis. For two years following the incident, he’d relied on a cane for walking.
Normally, Cohen would present a medical badge prior to triggering metal detectors. But that badge wasn’t required here. Everyone here knew Rabbi Aaron Cohen—very well. Over the past two decades the fifty-threeyear-old Brooklyn-born Haredi had become one of Israel’s most influential religious and political voices—a staunch proponent of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, the return of Zion, and the official state adoption of the Halakha
—
Jewish laws of the Torah—to govern public life. As a younger man, he’d served two terms in the Knesset’s leftist National Religious Party, whose credo had been “The land of Israel, for the people of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel.” And his teachings at Israel’s most prestigious yeshivas had earned him much acclaim. Jewish and secular Israelis considered him the next contender for Chief Rabbi.
“Have a great day,” the soldier said.
Cohen tipped his wide-brimmed
zayen
to him, then strolled outside with a slight hobble, the white tassels of a prayer scarf worn under his black vest swinging in rhythm with his quick shuffle. The strands of his long black beard and tightly twisted payess danced against a gentle breeze.
The spacious open plaza led up to an exposed section of the Temple Mount’s western retaining wall that was fifty-seven meters wide and nineteen meters high—the Kotel. Normally the place would be full of Jews chanting prayers, rending their garments, and shedding tears for the lost temple—all of it exemplifying how the place had earned its most famous nickname: the Wailing Wall. And for good fortune, tourists would stuff prayer notes into the razor-thin seams between the wall’s enormous
Herodian stone blocks.
But for the past month, the scene here had been much different.
Barricades zigzagged through the plaza. Backhoes ferried debris out to dump trucks parked outside the Dung Gate, where tour buses typically queued. Judaism’s most holy site now looked like a construction zone.
Cohen headed to a tall arched entry on the plaza’s north end that accessed the Western Wall Tunnel—an underground network of ancient roadways, cisterns, and water passages running deep beneath the buildings of the Muslim Quarter along the Temple Mount’s western foundation. Prior to its recent closure, tourists could’ve walked the subterranean passage from the Western Wall Plaza all the way to steps leading up and out onto Via Dolorosa beneath the Temple Mount’s northwest corner. An archaeological marvel.
But more important,
Cohen thought,
a direct link to first-century Jerusalem
.
He greeted half a dozen IDF soldiers chatting in a loose circle. He’d insisted on the added security detail prior to his agreeing to assist overseeing the sensitive and highly secretive project now under way here. Death threats from Muslim fanatics had already been received, with many more to follow, he was certain.
Inside, the cool air refreshed him. Wilson’s Arch swept high overhead— the remnant of a grand first-century bridge connecting the Upper City to the Temple Mount courtyards. A series of connected vaults formed a spacious hall normally used as a synagogue. Near where the Torah Ark had been only four weeks ago, Cohen maneuvered around heaps of limestone brick and mounds of cement aggregate. He descended a metal staircase that accessed the next level of the tunnel.
Emotions came quick in this mystical place—a gateway to an ancient world his grandfather had taught him so much about in a secret room in Brooklyn.
Swapping his
zayen
for a bright yellow hard hat, he entered a massive subterranean chamber—the Large Hall—where tour groups would normally assemble for an orientation about the Temple Mount’s first-century construction by Roman and Egyptian architects employed under the visionary architect King Herod the Great.
Cohen stayed close to the massive, beveled Herodian blocks that formed the mount’s base—one was the largest stone in Israel and weighed over six hundred metric tons.
Work lamps flooded white light over dozens of men working atop tall scaffolds who were repairing heavy fractures in the hall’s four lofty interlocking vaults. In many spots, massive gaps remained where whole sections of the thirteenth-century-b.c.e. arches had forcefully dislodged.
The earthquake that caused the damage had happened almost six weeks ago. Part of the Lord’s plan, Cohen was certain. Another sign that the prophecy was being fulfilled.
His eyes fell to the tiered seating in the rear of the hall, set in front of a miniature model of the mount and the temple precincts atop it circa 70 c.e., now crushed beneath three massive stones. Amazingly, the tourists who’d been present when the tremor hit had not been injured, or anything worse.
“Good morning, Rabbi!” a worker yelled over the clanging jackhammers.
Cohen waved to him.
The 5.3-magnitude quake, which had originated in the Great Rift Valley and cut through the Dead Sea to the east, paled in comparison to 1927’s 6.3 quake fifteen miles north in Jericho, which had claimed over two hundred casualties. Jerusalem’s Old City, however, built predominantly from unreinforced ancient limestone, sat upon layers of debris left behind by centuries of destruction and rebuilding. Seismic waves, therefore, came with amplified effect.
And so did the political aftershocks.
For over a decade, the tunnel’s ongoing excavation had been a flashpoint for Jewish and Muslim dissension over control of the Temple Mount—the world’s most coveted religious ground. And the unilateral restoration now under way here had drawn much protest from all Muslim and Palestinian groups—the Waqf, Hamas, the PLO . . .
Cohen gazed woefully up at the vaults once more. What sat above them contributed hugely to the controversy—the residential Muslim Quarter.
Over the centuries, the Muslims had constructed the stone vaults to raise their dwellings up to the level of the Temple Mount’s esplanade and facilitate easy access to the mosques. Over the centuries, the tunnel hollows had filled with mud and debris, which helped stabilize the superstructure. Therefore, Muslims contended that the recent Israeli excavations threatened the integrity of the structures above. Which was why it was so critical that no Muslim or Palestinian witness the extent of the damage that had truly taken place—because the riots and deaths that marked the 1996 opening of the tunnel would be nothing compared to the violence that could stem from this. As such, the Israeli government was funding this project while actively spinning its purpose.
Cohen proceeded to a temporary door painted in red letters: authorized personnel only. He punched a code into its digital keypad and the lock opened. Pushing through, he closed the door behind him.
Poured cement slabs paralleled the Temple Mount’s bare foundation wall to form a narrow corridor, crisscrossed overhead by steel stabilizer girders. Underfoot, the ground sloped steadily upward.
He moved fast through the passage and up some steps leading to the approximate midpoint of the Temple Mount’s western wall. The ceiling opened up high above and the foundation stones gave way to a massive sealed archway that crested at six meters—Warren’s Gate, discovered by British archaeologist Charles Warren in 1867.
Shortly after Saladin’s twelfth-century recapturing of Jerusalem, this opening to the lower structure of the Temple Mount platform had been blocked off. But now, a sizable breach had been made in its center, and light spilled out from the burrow.
He crouched down and peeked inside, where a second crew was busy clearing debris. Though the men wore the same uniforms as the crew in the main hall, they were not under the employ of Israelis. These men were one of Cohen’s many teams.
He couldn’t help but smile when he saw how far they’d already penetrated beneath the Mount.
Deep beneath the Temple Mount esplanade, their ear-pounding jackhammers still had Cohen concerned about what might be heard above. This secret dig, however, was in close proximity to the Large Hall, so he was certain that the noises would be easily confused with the sounds of the renovations taking place there.
A vibration against his chest startled him. He dipped into his breast pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and checked the display’s caller ID: an inside line at the Rockefeller Museum. Fortunately, the Israeli crews had installed signal-relay boosters throughout the tunnel to make outside communications more efficient. Flipping it open, he loudly said, “Hold a moment.”
He moved away from the archway and further up the tunnel. “Yes, what is it?” he finally asked.
Through the static, he listened to what the man on the other end had to say. News of a remarkable discovery in Qumran. “Is it . . . authentic?” he asked, a slight tremor running over his
fingers. The caller said he believed it was. “And who found it?” The caller told him, and his hand shook even harder. “Who did Mizrachi ask to handle the transcription?” Cohen didn’t like this answer either. “I’ll be there in an hour.”