The Sacred Cipher (30 page)

There were nods, but that was all. O’Neill, still trailed by his two bodyguards, turned
to leave the room. Passing his captain, he lowered his voice. “Bill, get a doc in
here—and a psych. These guys may be in shock.”

They had accompanied Larsen’s body back to Rhode Island and were swallowed up by the
countless masses who turned out to honor one of their leading citizens. Then they
went back to Manhattan and tried the best they could to insulate themselves from the
horror of recent events, the uniformed officers escorting each of them home. Four
days had passed. There had been no arrests, no more attempts on their lives, nothing
but the numbing knowledge that a good man who had quickly become a good friend, a
companion in a quest, had been brutally murdered by these predatory phantoms with
the lightning bolt amulet.

Bohannon had arranged for a leave of absence from the Bowery Mission in anticipation
of the trip to Jerusalem, but with the delay, he was unwilling to sit at home with
his thoughts, doubts, and growing anxiety, so he sat in his office with his thoughts,
doubts, and growing anxiety, filling his time with some mindless filing. He was kneeling
on the floor in his jeans and chamois shirt, stuffing manila files into hanging folders,
when he glimpsed a pair of impossibly spit-shined shoes followed by the bottom edges
of two trench coats. The commissioner had come to visit. “Hi, Rory,” Bohannon said
before he stood up and turned around.

There was no hint of a smile on O’Neill’s face. “C’mon,” he said, “we need to talk.”
O’Neill closed the door behind Bohannon, leaving his two menacing companions flanking
the portal. O’Neill turned the two leather office chairs so they were facing each
other, rather than allow Bohannon to retreat behind his desk. An alarm was going off
in Bohannon’s brain.

“Tom, after the explosion, we went back to the morgue, pulled out the corpse of that
truck driver, and gave him a much more thorough work over,” said O’Neill. “After that
crash, we had no reason to think it was anything more than a terrible accident. For
us, he was just a ‘John Doe’ we were still trying to identify. This time, we really
put forensics to work. The dead guy was an Egyptian, Sayeed Farouk, and he was in
this country illegally. He showed up on INS files about a month ago, entering on a
cargo ship from Cairo. His passport and entry visa were forgeries.”

O’Neill shifted in his seat, and Bohannon tried hard, but fruitlessly, to remain calm.

“You know we have teams of officers and detectives stationed around the world, working
with Interpol and other governments to try and stay ahead of terrorists.” O’Neill
leaned forward, hands folded between his knees, forearms resting on his legs, eyes
full of knowledge and warning. Bohannon could barely breathe. “Through our contacts
in the Middle East, we tracked down this guy Farouk and, just this morning, got a
report from Egypt, through the State Department. Farouk is an Egyptian nonentity,
a stonemason from the city of Suez with no record, no apparent connection to any terrorist
organization, no political flags at all. Apparently, just a hardworking family man.
So our guys in Egypt are wondering why this ‘everyman’ from Suez was driving a truck
in New York City that was ticketed to take you out.

“Our guys dug deeper . . . talked to his coworkers, his neighbors. All they could
find out about Farouk, other than that he was a talented mason, was that he had an
interest in ancient Egyptian history, spent a lot of time in the library, and belonged
to a historical society in Suez.”

Bohannon’s mind raced around pyramids and pharaohs until he was suddenly brought up
short by O’Neill’s silence. “So, that’s it?” Bohannon asked.

O’Neill reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out his hand, and held it, palm
up, in front of Bohannon. “Ever see anything like this before?”

Resting in O’Neill’s hand was an amulet, a Coptic cross with a lightning bolt slashing
through it on the diagonal. Bohannon’s insides began to churn, a taste of bile rising
in his throat.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it twice, within minutes of each other,” said Bohannon, shifting
uneasily in his chair. “Once on the subway, I thought the guy was trying to pick my
pocket. And then, again, on the driver who crashed his truck into the magazine store
at Spring and Lafayette, nearly killing me. And Doc Johnson also saw one on a guy
who tried to push him in front of a subway train and ended up dead instead.” He looked
up at the commissioner. “What is it, Rory? What does it mean?”

O’Neill’s fingers traveled up, down, and around the amulet, as if his senses could
glean some clue from the burnished metal.

“We don’t know much about these guys. Nobody does, because they’ve got no history.
Up to this point, they’ve simply been a bunch of Egyptians interested in ancient documents.
Suddenly they show up here in New York trying to take out a team of guys who are headed
for Jerusalem to search for a hidden temple. Didn’t you tell me the other day that
the scroll you found had been sent to Egypt for safekeeping and had remained there
for nearly eight hundred years?”

“Yeah,” said Bohannon, perking up, “the letter indicates that it was to be delivered
to Cairo, but Doc believes it may have ended up somewhere else in Egypt because there
is absolutely no record of it in any of Cairo’s ancient libraries and, because of
its unusual composition, it certainly would have drawn some notice.”

“Could it have ended up in Suez?” O’Neill asked. Bohannon didn’t answer, and O’Neill
did not wait for a reply.

“I told you our contacts in Egypt tried to track down Farouk and interviewed a lot
of people in Suez. They came across something they didn’t understand, but which they
passed along as part of the report. Farouk was a member of what appeared to be a group
of historians whose name, in Arabic, would be translated
The Prophet’s Guard
. The group apparently was formed about 1100
A.D
. Records are sketchy, but it appears for approximately the first 750 years of its
existence, the group was called the
Temple Guard
and it was composed of Coptic Christians.”

O’Neill had been sitting back comfortably as he shared this information. But he suddenly
pulled himself closer to Bohannon. “Tom, did you know that Egypt was a mainly Christian
country for more than a thousand years? I never knew that,” he continued, not waiting
for an answer. “Mark, the guy who wrote the gospel of Mark in the Bible, he preached
in Alexandria, died there, and started the Christian church in Egypt—the Coptics.
Even though the Muslims conquered Egypt in six-something, Egypt didn’t become a Muslim
country until the twelfth century. And there is still a strong Christian church in
Egypt.

“Well, for many years, the Christian protectors of the scroll, the Temple Guard, held
their meetings in a building now called the Bibliotheca Historique de L’Egypte in
Suez, which has some of the rarest documents from the ancient Middle East. They met
at the library in a room that was completely off-limits to anyone who was not a member
of the group, a room that was removed from every other part of the library and was
locked down tight when the group wasn’t there. The Temple Guard appears to have been
all but unknown outside of that library. Then, around a hundred fifty to two hundred
years ago, everything changed.

“The library’s records show there was some radical turnover in the group. It suddenly
became controlled by Muslims, and the name was changed from the
Temple Guard
in Coptic to the
Prophet’s Guard
in Arabic. Oddly,” said O’Neill, “not long after the name was changed, the Prophet’s
Guard abandoned the room and never returned to the library. When the staff looked
in the room, it contained a table and an open chest sitting on top of the table. That
was it. There was nothing else in that room.

“And here’s the pièce de résistance—It was called the Scroll Room.”

Bohannon sat, dumbfounded.
If Larsen hadn’t been killed, none of this would have come to light
.

“Tom, my gut tells me these Coptic Christians had the scroll and were either hiding
it or protecting it until a little more than 150 years ago. From what you’ve told
me, the Temple Guard probably knew where the scroll came from. They may have known
what some of the message contained—there’s got to be some reason why they protected
it so faithfully for 750 years. But then the Muslims got control of it, probably not
a friendly takeover, either. And not long after that, it disappeared . . . and so
did the Prophet’s Guard. For the last 150 years, I think the Prophet’s Guard has been
searching for this scroll, trying to get it back, trying to keep it out of the wrong
hands. And right now, you guys are the wrong hands.

“I don’t know how they found you or found out that you possessed the scroll,” said
O’Neill, fingering the amulet once more. “It really doesn’t matter because now they’ve
got you dead in their sites, and clearly, they are not going to stop until they’ve
recovered the scroll, all of you are dead, or both.”

O’Neill looked once more at the amulet, then casually tossed it to Bohannon. “Do you
know the meaning of that symbol?”

Bohannon shook his head.

“It’s meant to represent ‘Death to Christians.’”

O’Neill allowed Bohannon time to process that bit of information.

“Tom, you were wondering if I would prevent you and your team from leaving for Jerusalem.
The way I see it, you don’t have a choice. If you stay here, you will still be a target
and so will your family. They probably are already, yours and Rodriguez’s. It won’t
matter how much police protection we provide for you. If these guys really want to
get to you, and it’s pretty obvious that they do, we won’t be able to stop them forever.”

Reaching across to put his hand on Bohannon’s arm, O’Neill’s voice softened. “Tom,
the best way to get these madmen to take their eyes off your family is for you and
the other three characters to get out of the country, quickly. While you’re doing
that, we’ll get your families out of their homes as a precaution and keep them safe
until you get back. But there’s one more thing I want you to do.”

Fearful that his family could be harmed, enraged that his friend was dead, and determined
to carry on with what appeared to be God’s plan, Bohannon tried to shake off his warring
emotions and focus on the commissioner’s words.

With a voice more somber than he had expected, Bohannon responded to the commissioner.
“What do you need, Rory?”

“Here,” said O’Neill, handing Bohannon another of his business cards. “I want you
to call this guy at the State Department, Sam Reynolds. His dad and I joined the department
when we were discharged from the Marines. I’ve known Sam all his life; he’s a good
man. And he can help you, where you’re going. Talk to him today, before you leave.
Give him some idea of what you’re planning. He could be an asset when you need it.
You said Larsen had gotten you a satellite phone? Well, use it to stay in touch with
Reynolds. He’ll keep me updated.”

O’Neill got out of the chair and put on his coat. “Use your head, Tom. Find a way
to get in and get out quickly.” O’Neill extended his hand. “Come home alive, Tom.
Make sure you come home.”

Bohannon stepped out of the plane, into the Jetway, and immediately thought of that
line from Neil Simon’s
Biloxi Blues
, uttered by Matthew Broderick on his first day at Paris Island. “It was hot . . .
heat hot . . . jungle hot . . . Africa hot.”

Walking up the Jetway to the terminal in Ben Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv, his
pampered Western body was once again embraced by man’s artificial climate control.

The four of them cleared customs quickly—scholars and amateur spelunkers on a trip
to explore some Israeli caves, a trip sanctioned through Kallie’s connections at Tel-Aviv
University. And they were blessed to find their luggage waiting for them on the carousel,
El Al’s legendary effectiveness proven once again. While the luggage may have undergone
security scans of many stripes, none of them was concerned about tripping an alarm
because the only things in their bags were personal items. The cave-exploring gear
was shipped separately to their hotel.

So carrying his bags out of the baggage claim that mid-June Saturday morning, why
did Bohannon feel more like a spy than a tourist?