The Sacred Cipher (35 page)

“That’s one side,” she said, then drained her iced tea. “But should the Israeli authorities
catch wind of your plans, they will immediately suspect that you are one of two things—foreign
radicals intent on bringing about some biblical calamity or fulfilling some strange,
messianic urge. Or they would suspect you were acting together with the Jewish Underground,
a banned Jewish terrorist organization committed to blowing up Muslim structures on
the Temple Mount.

“Whoever you are, the Israelis would be swift in deciding on a course of action. If
they had even the faintest hint that you had designs on excavating the Temple Mount,
you wouldn’t be investigated; you would be immediately arrested, thoroughly interrogated,
and then dumped into a jail cell until they could arrange an unceremonious removal
from the country and the revocation of any future right to enter the State of Israel.”

Kallie’s neck was getting stiff, both from tension and from the fact that she was
punctuating her words with emphatic thrusts of her head and hands. “But,” she said,
rolling her head back over her shoulders, sitting back in her chair, “if any of them
dreamed that you were searching for the Third Temple, if they understood that you
guys believe it exists, you’d be squashed like bugs, me along with you. A Third Temple?
That would mean war, all-out war. The Israelis would probably have to go nuclear to
hold off the Arabs. Your lives, my life, they would mean nothing to either the Israelis
or the Arabs as a price to prevent a nuclear war.”

Kallie had closed her eyes at the thought of nuclear war. If Israel went nuclear against
the Arabs, someone would go nuclear against Israel . . . Iran, Moscow, perhaps even
the North Koreans.

Opening her eyes, she watched in silent contemplation as each of her guests weighed
the implications of her words and recognized, for the first time, the enormity of
the outcome should their information prove correct.

“What do you think, Joe?” Bohannon asked.

“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Rodriguez, “not only about our chances of finding
the Temple, but also our chances of surviving the next few days and returning home
in one piece. Maybe it would make sense to leave the backpacks of equipment at the
hotel, hightail it to the airport, and get out of Israel as fast as possible. Why
not leave now?”

“Because the ‘lightning bolts’ are still looking for our sorry rear ends,” Rizzo answered.

“And because they are still looking for the scroll,” added Johnson. “We can’t go home
now. Your families would still be in danger, and we would be in danger. Our lives
are at risk whether we stay here or go. But here, it’s only us at risk—us and Kallie.
We go home without determining whether the Temple is real or not, the risk returns
with us. The lightning bolt guys are after the scroll. They know it exists. It was
likely in their possession at one time. They may not know all that it means, but obviously,
they believe it’s important enough to kill for it. Perhaps this is the same group
that Spurgeon feared. Who knows? And it doesn’t really matter. We’ve got this scroll,
we know its message, and it’s up to us to find out if it’s true. That’s all we have
control over at the moment.”

Joe Rodriguez ran his hand through the thick, black curls on his head. “Maybe next
time we go walking around the Mount, we should wear disguises.”

The stiff throbbing at the back of Kallie’s neck intensified. Too many long days hunched
over digs in small pits, meticulously sweeping away grains of sand with a toothbrush.
“What do you mean, next time?”

Kallie saw a momentary flicker of understanding in Rodriguez’s eyes. “After the reception
last night, we walked down David Street to the Western Wall Tunnel. We stood there
for a while, talking about Warren’s Gate and the Foundation Stones. Then we walked
over to the Western Wall. We were wondering if maybe we were there too long.”

“You didn’t go into the Western Wall Tunnel?” she asked.

“No,” said Dr. Johnson, “we just stood there and watched for a while. I was surprised
how many people were still entering the tunnel so late at night. Kallie, what is it?”

“How long were you standing there?”

The four of them looked at each other, each now exhibiting a growing anxiety. The
others deferred to Bohannon.

“We might have been standing there for twenty or thirty minutes,” he said. Bohannon
got out of his chair and stepped toward one of the apartment’s sunny windows. “We’re
in trouble, aren’t we? We made a mistake.”

None of them needed to hear the answer.

“There are thousands of hidden surveillance cameras all over Jerusalem,” said Kallie,
suddenly feeling empty inside, “and hundreds scattered around the Temple Mount. As
a society living with the constant threat of terrorism, Shin Bet’s internal security
apparatus is incredibly effective. The city is reduced to sectors, and each sector
has a sophisticated communications center monitoring the feeds from all of the cameras
in that sector. If you were standing outside the Western Wall Tunnel for thirty minutes
last night, Shin Bet has you on tape. You may already be under surveillance.”

“Do you know these men?”

They were inside a low, stone building. Once a family’s dwelling, but now caught in
the no-man’s-land between Jordan and the land the Jews stole in 1967. The floor was
dusty, the tabletop dusty, the air was dusty. The Imam looked down at his once spotless
white robe now coated in gray.

Mahamoud drew closer to the photo. It was clearly a copy. But the four men were visible,
their features distinct.

“No. I don’t know who they are.”

“Shin Bet is concerned,” said the Imam. As the iron-willed leader of En Sherif, the
outlawed faction of the Northern Islamic Front, the Imam had cultivated many impeccable
sources of information. “They are running the photos through facial recognition and
have reached out to Interpol. As yet, they know nothing. Only that these four stood
at the entrance to the Western Wall Tunnel for thirty minutes.”

“Who is the one?” asked Mahamoud, pointing to the one in the shorts “Israeli? But
if Israeli, why would Shin Bet be concerned? Unless . . . unless he was a rogue .
. . Jewish Underground, perhaps?”

“I don’t know,” said the older man, his kaffiyeh hanging down past his long gray beard.
“But I am also concerned. Leonidas has proven his value again. We pay him well; we
will continue to need his service. But for now, alert Yazeer. Get his team activated.
Find these men. Find them quickly.”

Rizzo was at Kallie’s computer, pulling up Google Earth while Kallie was huddled around
the kitchen table with Bohannon, Rodriguez, and Johnson, two maps overlapping one
end of the table, four thick reference books stacked on the other.

“I’ve been doing some of my own work while I was waiting for you to get over here,”
Kallie was saying as she pulled open one of the huge books. “I thought . . . well
. . . I thought you guys were doing a treasure hunt. I Googled all of you when Sammy
first got in touch with me. And, Doc, forgive me. I saw there was this big stink in
the past about selling counterfeit antiquities, and well, I don’t know, for a while
I was worried that you might not have legitimate motives. I’m sorry about that. But
it didn’t take long for me to put that aside and turn my energy to figuring out why
you were coming all the way to Israel.

“So I started taking the few pieces of information that you shared with me combined
with what I knew from the research I did for you, and I began running down every thread
as far as I possibly could.

“Sammy,” Kallie said through the doorway, “have you zeroed in on that area and pulled
up that interactive map of Israel?” When Rizzo grunted an affirmative, Kallie addressed
the table again. “Come on, I’m going to show you something interesting.”

Rizzo made room for Kallie at the computer. He hopped up on another chair to remain
by her side. “Okay . . . here’s the Temple Mount . . . you can see the Al-Aqsa Mosque,
the Dome of the Rock, even some of the walls. Now, the satellite photo can’t get us
close enough, so let’s pull up the map of Israel and Jerusalem. Okay, here, on the
right of the Temple Mount is the Kidron Valley. Down there is the Gihon Spring and
the City of David. I figured if you were going to find a way under the Temple Mount,
one that wasn’t closely guarded or overrun with tourists, it would have to come from
around Gihon. There have been several interesting discoveries there recently by Israeli
archaeologists. It had always been assumed that King Hezekiah built his water tunnel
from Gihon to the Pool of Siloam to protect Jerusalem’s water supply in time of siege.
But they have just discovered the foundations of a wall much farther down the slope
to the Kidron Valley, a wall that would have enclosed the Gihon Spring. It even had
guard towers on either side of the spring, obviously for protection. So Hezekiah’s
Tunnel was not to supply water.

“That’s one of the amazing things about Jerusalem, how little has been done archaeologically
over time and how limited our information is. Why, just recently a team uncovered
a tunnel that was totally unknown—”

“The King’s Garden Tunnel, right?” asked Johnson. “Larsen and I also believed that
would be a possible point of access. It runs in the right direction, passes very close
to where archaeologists have theorized the Holy of Holies exists, and is large enough
to have been a conduit for the material needed to build the Temple. That would be
my guess.”

Nolan was nodding her head in agreement. “You’re right, Doc. That is exactly where
I was looking. I figured the only challenge for us would be initially getting into
the tunnel. Now that it has been discovered, security has been increased in that area.
But I’ve been checking it out over the past several weeks, using my garden guide status
to visit at different times of the week, different times of the day or night. And
there is good news. The tunnel entrance is nearly hidden from the Old City and the
Temple Mount, on the down slope of a hillock, surrounded by high bushes. It has not
been opened to the public, so there are no tourists. And most importantly, it’s not
guarded after midnight.”

Bohannon’s heart skipped. “That’s great!” he blurted. “Right?”

“It’s good,” Kallie said calmly. “It’s good. It’s a place to start. But there is no
guarantee. And there is a second good possibility, Zechariah’s Tomb. Joe, would you
get that book from the table for me? Thanks.”

She flipped a few pages and then turned the book around for the others to read. “This
is the family lineage of the Jewish priesthood, from Aaron through the seventeenth
century. It goes on for several pages. Turn over two pages, look at the one on the
left, about halfway down.”

Rizzo spotted it first. “There’s our boy, Abiathar, son of Elijah.”

“Okay,” said Kallie, “now track his lineage backward about two thousand years. Look
for the prophet Zechariah. Found it? Okay, now look to the side. What does it say?”

Rodriguez followed the lineage lines from Zechariah to a line that ran parallel through
generation after generation. “It says Zechariah was from the priestly family of Beni
Hazir.”

“Okay,” Kallie continued, “go back to Abiathar.”

Rodriguez flipped the pages. “It says Abiathar was also from the priestly family of
Beni Hazir. Is that normal? Are all priests from Beni Hazir?”

“Doc?” said Kallie.

“No, all priests are from Aaron, but there were several other family lines over time
that were differentiated primarily because of theological differences. Families that
became known for a different interpretation of the Torah. So, tell us, what’s the
link to Beni Hazir? You’ve taken us here for a reason.”

Kallie swung around to again face the computer screen and passed the book to Rizzo.
She moved the mouse so that the cursor returned to the King’s Garden Tunnel. “Okay,
so here’s the King’s Garden Tunnel, at the base of the Kidron Valley.

“But look to the right, on the other side of the Kidron Valley. Do you see that notation,
‘The Tomb of Zechariah’? Watch this.” Kallie mouse clicked on the “I” info icon next
to Zechariah’s Tomb.

Up popped a small info balloon, with a pointer to Zechariah’s Tomb. Inside the balloon
it said, “Believed to be the burial site of the prophet, one of a series of tombs
belonging to the priestly family of Beni Hazir.”