The Sacred Cipher (45 page)

“Well, you tell the Antiquities Commission for me that I think they are a bunch of
idiots. It’s amazing this nation still exists with such fools in positions of responsibility.”

Major Mordechai slammed the handset into the telephone receiver with such force that
Levin knew he would have to order a new unit.

“Incredible stupidity, incredible,” the major moaned as he began pacing through the
Aleph Center. “They didn’t think it was important. Didn’t think it was important!
By all that’s holy, what’s wrong with these people?”

All Captain Levin could do was wait until the major had expended his anger and frustration.
He sat on his stool, chomping on the stem of his pipe, and waited. Eventually, the
major came over, leaned against a railing, and filled in the missing pieces for Levin.

“When the King’s Garden Tunnel was discovered last year, at least the entrance down
by Gihon, it didn’t take much excavation for the Antiquities Commission to discover
that it had hit a dead end. So, they began plotting what they expected were reasonable
courses for the tunnel to follow and, at one of their possible terminus points, they
found a similar tunnel entrance. But it also culminated, after a few hundred meters,
in a dead end.”

“Another Hezekiah’s Tunnel?” asked Levin.

“Exactly. They figured it was begun at both ends at the same time and, like Hezekiah’s
Tunnel, it would have scores of dead-end shafts. But the commission didn’t have the
funds in its budget to excavate a new tunnel. So they decided to announce the King’s
Garden Tunnel to the world, set up the entrance down by Gihon, and charge admission
fees to tourists until they got enough money to excavate the full length of the tunnel.
But they kept that information to themselves.” Mordechai just shook his head.

“Then there’s another entrance,” said Levin. “One we don’t know about.”

The major’s eyes narrowed to tiny specs. “They’ve gotten in, haven’t they?” he said.
“They’ve gotten under the Mount.”

Before leaving from New York City, Johnson had spent many hours planning and mapping
out how the team would approach their search under the Temple Mount.

Using all of the existing information from Warren’s digs, the Israeli Antiquities
Commission, contacts at the British Museum, and every scrap of evidence he could find
on the Internet, Johnson began to compile a notebook full of Temple Mount lore—fact,
fiction, and frivolity. Sifting through the available information, he also began to
construct a grid of the Mount and its environs, a grid that existed both above and
below the Mount.

His intention was to divide the space above and below into corresponding sectors.
He then applied all of his accumulated data to the sectors. Using colors, symbols,
and hunches, Johnson began to discern what he believed were the most likely sectors
for where Abiathar may have erected the Third Temple. One factor was discerning where
the original Temple was located. Another was trying to discern Abiathar’s point of
entrance to the dark halls of the Temple Mount’s belly. Neither was certain.

Contributing to uncertainty was the fact that, like all ancient archaeological sites,
the Temple Mount had grown in height over the past two thousand years, each civilization
building its foundations upon the ashes of its predecessor. Like most tells in the
Middle East, the slice of civilization Johnson was searching for now rested under
layer upon layer of latter days.

Johnson’s problem was a three-dimensional one, not only length and width, but depth
as well. In order to minimize his possibilities, Johnson slaved over his homemade
grid, exercising his brain and his resources to their maximum potential.

In the midst of that exercise, Johnson had a critical revelation. The scroll must
accompany them.

Throughout the chase to find the meaning of the scroll, all of them agreed that, prior
to leaving for Jerusalem, they would secure the scroll in a bank’s safe deposit box.
They also agreed that, just in case they didn’t return, they should leave a letter
and the key to the safe deposit box with Johnson’s attorney. The scroll would be presented
to the British Museum in return for a hefty contribution to the Bowery Mission.

But the more Johnson studied the pieces of information he managed to find, and the
more he thought about the cleverness with which Abiathar had communicated his secret,
the more he became convinced that the mystery of the scroll had not been fully unlocked.

“Gentlemen, please, use your heads, not your testosterone,” Johnson pleaded that day
in his office. “Look at this scroll. It’s a message, not a language. The cipher Abiathar
created was incredibly complex. This man went to extraordinary lengths not only to
send this message, but also to hide this message. Do you then think it reasonable
that anyone who could decipher this message and find an entryway under the Temple
Mount would then be empowered to walk right up to where Elijah and Abiathar had spent
decades, and countless lives, to construct the Third Temple? Don’t you think it would
be more likely that the closer anyone would get to the Third Temple, the more complex
the problem of finding it? After all, neither Elijah nor Abiathar could afford the
possibility that some fool Bedouin could stumble into a cave that would lead under
the Mount and that, by sheer dumb luck, he could stumble upon the completely finished
Third Temple of the Jews. They wouldn’t allow that to happen.”

Johnson was grateful for the reluctant nods around the table, but frustrated with
the denseness that still remained.

“Gentlemen, there must exist, yet to come, puzzles, riddles, ciphers, something that
will need to be solved, something that will be directly connected to this scroll,
this key, which will give us access to the location of the Temple.

“We must,” Johnson said with emphasis, “we must take the scroll with us. The scroll,
not a copy, or we will simply be wasting our time.” Suddenly, Johnson was drained.
He hadn’t realized how impassioned he was about this search.

Now, standing under the Temple Mount, Johnson looked at the grid in his hands. He
hoped he had gotten it right.

Anwar and Aphek, cousins and bricklayers, followed Rasaf’s orders to walk downhill
within sight of the entrance to the King’s Garden Tunnel. But that also put them into
the midst of the Israeli soldiers stationed all around the tunnel’s entrance. They
were scruffy enough to be of no consequence to the soldiers, some standing idly in
the rain, some running back and forth on unknown errands. As a result of the demonstration
on the Temple Mount, other civilians were also walking up and down the hill in the
early morning half-light.

The cousins took no notice of the three men who passed them, dressed in kaftans, stern
looks on their faces. They were focused more on the movement of the soldiers. The
knives that pierced their necks were so thin, so sharp, that neither felt anything
amiss until hands grabbed their shoulders and pulled them into the darkness at the
side of the road. They felt nothing as sharp, bloodied knives silently sliced the
leather thongs around their necks, the amulets slipped inside kaftans for delivery
to the Imam.

What Johnson hadn’t expected was the complexity of the labyrinth they now found themselves
exploring. None of his research had prepared him for this.

At the five-pronged fork in the bowels of Zechariah’s Tomb, Johnson overcame his first
hurdle. By exploring different forks, and the tunnels that ran from them, Johnson
found the tombs were a crisscrossed mishmash of low-ceiling tunnels, some flanked
by burial racks stacked like bunk beds along the walls, and some tunnels leading to
individual burial crypts. All of these different tunnels spread out from the five-pronged
junction, heading in numerous directions for unknown distances. Now he knew why there
was a locked iron gate over the Tomb’s entrance.

Under closer inspection, Johnson discovered small inscriptions at the upper left corner
of each prong’s portal. The inscriptions were generally in Hebrew or Aramaic and appeared
to be listing the family names of those buried in that particular tunnel. That was
how he discovered the corridor of the Beni Hazir. And that was how their search began.

Johnson estimated it would take no more than forty-eight hours to determine whether
the message of the scroll was true or just a fairy tale. From the outside, he had
anticipated an initial period, perhaps twelve to twenty-four hours, of exploratory
searching, using the same tunnels or corridors that Abiathar and his workers must
have used. From there, Johnson expected the task to become more difficult. From what
they knew of Abiathar, the scroll, and the cipher, the old priest would have carefully
protected the path to the Temple and, ultimately, was likely to have sealed the existing
route altogether. Perhaps in more than one location. But Abiathar would not have wanted
to hide the Temple completely. The scroll’s purpose was to eventually lead the Jews
back to the Temple when it was safe.

So Johnson surmised there would likely be several critical junctures where choices
would have to be made, choices guided either by the scroll itself or by some signal
or cipher that Abiathar would have left behind. Depending on the complexity of identifying
and unraveling these clues, Johnson had anticipated an additional twelve hours. Throw
in some time to sleep, rest, or eat, within forty-eight hours they should either have
found the Temple or concluded this was all a hoax.

Drawing on their field experience, in consultation with Larsen, they agreed to provision
themselves for three days. If they hadn’t solved this puzzle within seventy-two hours,
they would have to come out and try again. And Johnson knew, now, there would not
be any second chance. Too many people were determined to stop them. They had gotten
lucky, this time. There would not be another time.