The Sacred Cipher (27 page)

Thus far, Bohannon had discovered that the Temple Mount was the central, historical
focus of Jerusalem, both in ancient and modern times. The site was home to Solomon’s
Temple, to Zerubbabel’s Temple that was built by the returnees from the Babylonian
Exile, and to the enlarged and spectacularly refurbished Temple that Herod the Great
constructed around and over the existing structure before dismantling it. What remained
on the thirty-six-acre Temple Mount platform today was the result of two major building
efforts: the first begun about 20
B.C.
by Herod the Great and the second occurring under the Umayyad caliphs in the late
seventh century.

Sunday night was quiet on the Fordham University campus. Many students were still
home for the weekend, others sleeping off the weekend or cramming for finals. Caitlin
Bohannon left the library carrying three books and a knapsack and headed cross-campus
to O’Hare Hall, the five-story dormitory that was her August-to-May home. Her thoughts
were on her psych final, not on the man who emerged from the shadows of the construction
site on Martyr’s Lawn. Slipping past Larkin Hall, on the west side of the old Duane
Library, Caitlin was aware of the fact that few people were about. She was a junior,
and a girl didn’t survive for long in New York City—let alone on a college campus
in the midst of the Bronx—without developing urban radar, an early warning system
for potential danger. But Fordham was relatively safe, emergency call boxes were stationed
throughout the campus . . . and psych was dominating her thoughts. She walked on the
west side of Thebaud Hall, skirted the grass meadow of Edwards Parade, and entered
the tree-lined path that flanked Keating Hall—Fordham’s most recognizable landmark.

That’s when she noticed the person behind her—short, huddled into a burgundy, Fordham
hooded sweatshirt, probably another student sweating the finals. She could not be
aware of the second man, hidden under the trees of the pathway ahead.

Prior to his study, Bohannon only knew of Herod from the biblical Christmas stories:
the mad, jealous king of Judea who ordered the massacre of all male children in Bethlehem.
He didn’t know that King Herod was a master builder on an unprecedented scale.

In addition to his soaring palace at Masada and the deepwater port he carved out of
the coast at Caesarea—including a 3,500-seat amphitheater—Herod initiated a project
to expand the temple area of Mount Zion by creating a vast level platform bordered
by a massive retaining wall.

Herod more than doubled the size of the previous Temple Mount. His enlarged enclosure
constituted the largest sacred space in the whole of classical antiquity. By comparison,
the area dedicated to the goddess Athena on the Acropolis of Athens, including the
Parthenon, occupied barely a fifth of the area of its Jerusalem counterpart. Herod’s
glorious sanctuary was destroyed in 70
A.D.
when the Romans conquered and burned Jerusalem, effectively ending the first Jewish
revolt against Rome.

A dark shape moved out of the shadows ahead, into the path. Caitlin stopped. She turned
her head. The student behind her was closing the distance quickly. An ally, perhaps?
Someone to walk with?

She glanced quickly to her left—the shape was moving toward her—and swung back to
the right. The “student” looked much too old.

“Excuse me, miss, but could you—”

The psych book was her heaviest. Dropping the other two, she hit the “student” square
in the face, spine first, with her right hand, pulled the pepper spray from her pocket
with her left hand and let fly toward the closing shadow on her left. Without waiting
to check out the results, Caitlin spun on her heel and raced across the broad, open
expanse of Edwards Parade.

It was late. Bohannon wasn’t surprised that he had nodded off over the stack of papers
in his lap. He drank some of the water by his side, poured the rest in his hand, and
rubbed it on his face.

He had been surprised to discover that, after the destruction of 70
A.D
., the Temple Mount remained largely unoccupied for seven hundred years, until the
late seventh century when the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik and his successors reclaimed
the site and established what exists today: the splendid Dome of the Rock on a raised
platform in the middle of the esplanade, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the esplanade’s
southern end. The Muslims renamed the sacred enclosure al-Haram al-Sharif, “the Noble
Sanctuary.”

As Caitlin sprinted south across the flank of Edwards Parade, she pulled out her key
ring, put the oversize whistle in her mouth, and blew with all the breath remaining
in her lungs. Before she reached the campus security office to the west of Thebaud
Hall, two security officers were running in her direction and a security vehicle—lights
flashing—was circling behind her.

Ten minutes later, an officer brought her bloody psych book into campus security.
Finally, Caitlin wept.

The only surviving part of the temple complex from Herod’s period, Bohannon discovered,
was the incomplete circuit of the enclosure wall, the south, west, and east sides,
its distinctive masonry leaving no dispute to its Herodian lineage. On the south,
the ancient masonry had now been laid bare along the entire length of the wall, which
was also the southern wall of the Haram al-Sharif. The western Herodian wall was also
uncovered along its entire length, the southern part of it the Jewish devotional section
known as the Western Wall, formerly the Wailing Wall. Like the southern wall, the
western wall of the Temple Mount was also the western wall of the Haram al-Sharif.

If they were going to succeed, Bohannon and his team would have to get under, over,
or around those walls without being detected.

The phone rang.
Who can it be at this hour?

Joe Rodriguez sat on the sofa. Annie and Deirdre were upstairs with Caitlin, safely
entrenched in the warm confines of the master bedroom. Caitlin was safe, unharmed.
Joe looked ready to tear the guts out of a rhino. Tom had all he could do to keep
his hands from shaking.

Bohannon didn’t know how long they had been sitting in silence.

“This changes everything.”

Tom could barely hear the words.

“I bet it was them,” Joe muttered. “I bet it was them. I’ll kill them if I ever get
my hands on them.”

“Get in line.” Tom looked up at Caitlin’s high school graduation picture on the mantle.
He twisted his hands together and set his jaw. His insides felt like a hundred pounds
of wet concrete.

“You know,” Bohannon’s voice was a whisper, “for most of my life, I’ve told people
I believe in God. Until Annie and I got married, that was basically what it was, words.
Then I began to see the depth of her faith and experience its impact on our life together.
It’s been a long journey”—Tom swiped his right hand through his hair—“but there have
been moments when God’s presence, his love, have seemed so real, so close.”