The Sacred Cipher (6 page)

“These symbols are unique,” Rodriguez puzzled. “I expected it to be in a language
I didn’t understand. But this—I don’t even know what these characters are. They’re
not Asian, they’re not Hebrew, and they’re not Cyrillic. It doesn’t look anything
like Greek. And it certainly doesn’t look Roman. I’ve got to tell you: I don’t know
what I’m looking at.”

“That makes two of us,” said Bohannon, twisting his head to get a look from another
angle.

Rodriguez got up from his chair, turned his back on the table, and looked out through
the rough opening the workers had pounded into the wall. The door was open for ventilation,
and two of the Middle Eastern workers, no doubt curious, were watching them from the
doorway. Rodriguez made a mental note.
We need to install a much more secure lock on this door right away. And I need to
get this stuff out of here
. Turning back into the room, Rodriguez leaned against the huge, old safe that had
harbored the scroll and other antiquities. His head hanging down between his folded
arms, Rodriguez forced his mind to focus.

Suddenly, he turned back toward Bohannon and the table.

“Tom, just from a preliminary review, the books and documents we’ve found in this
safe are rare and valuable. Which means Spurgeon and his friends only sent things
to Klopsch that they knew were important or hard to find. Association gives this scroll
a high level of importance. Factor in two other things we know. One, it’s been treated
lovingly and carefully for a lot more than a hundred years, and it was provided its
own special compartment in this safe. Two, in his own hand, Spurgeon described it
as ‘of the utmost importance and sensitivity.’ What else did he write?” Rodriguez
stepped over to the desk where Spurgeon’s letter had been inserted into a quart-size
ziplock bag. “‘It is also one of the most dangerous documents in existence. A document
that I am convinced some men would commit murder to possess, and other men would commit
murder to destroy.’”

“Maybe that’s why Klopsch needed such a big safe,” offered Bohannon.

Rodriguez rubbed his chin, his head slowly nodding up and down. “Tom, I don’t have
any idea what may be in this document. But everything in me is saying it’s a precious
piece of history. And if we allow ourselves to get involved with it . . . well . .
. I don’t know where it’s going to take us.”

Silence wrestled with dust to fill the space.

“You found this thing, and it belongs to the mission,” Rodriguez said softly. “I don’t
know what you were planning to do with it. But from a librarian’s point of view, this
is fascinating. With your permission and with your help, I’d like to find out what
this scroll is and what it means.”

“It’s probably going to take a lot of your time,” said Bohannon.

“That’s okay,” said Rodriguez. “I’ll put in as much time as it takes. Until your sister
tells me I’ve got to stop.”

“At this point, they don’t know what they are looking at or what they should do with
it. But they are searching.”

A hand slipped out of the darkness and reached for one of the hoses coming from the
hookah in the middle of the table, pulling it back into the blackness where he sat.

“The tall one has great strength,” said Hamid, leaning into the table, his voice low.
“He prowls like a lion. He will be formidable . . . if they discover the scroll’s
story.”

Music, flutes, drums, cymbals at a frantic pace pounded the room, making it difficult
for them to hear even themselves. Smoke filled the small bar, a lethal fog that cloaked
their meeting and lay on their skin like a dry sweat. Yet their caution was at its
highest level. They were in the belly of the Great Satan. Even whispered words carried
great risk.

“Have they spoken to anyone else?” The voice from the darkness was clear in spite
of the music.

“No.” Ishmael pulled long on the mouthpiece, holding the smoke before exhaling a thick,
blue vapor. “They are still in the room. It is now tightly locked, a heavy wooden
door. The deskmen patrol regularly.”

“They will move, soon.” Sayeed Farouk emerged from the darkness, his red-rimmed eyes
boring a hole through the haze. “They need more knowledge. Perhaps, if we eliminate
the head, the body will wither before it grows more parts. I will stay close to him.
Monitor his every move. Come to know his habits. Hamid, stay with the tall one. Ishmael,
lease the truck. Bring it to the garage. We should wait no longer.”

Few palaces could rival the stately grandeur of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Library nestled on the east side of Bryant Park in New York City. Tom Bohannon had
been inside the massive building a few times in the past while doing research. But
on this Monday morning in mid-April, faithfully trailing his long-striding brother-in-law
through the marble halls, past the many guard posts, and deep into the private and
off-limits rooms of this national landmark, Bohannon was in overloaded awe of the
incredible facility.

With seventy-five miles of bookshelves in the building itself and another fourteen
miles of stacks extending underground, it was one of the greatest institutions for
scholarly investigation in the world. Its collection of fifty million books, manuscripts,
maps, prints, and literary and artistic treasures grew by ten thousand items a week
and was visited by ten million people a year. Walking through its halls, his footsteps
echoing back to him, Bohannon was surrounded by some of the greatest works of some
of the greatest minds in history: the first Gutenberg Bible brought to the New World,
Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s
First Folio, a manuscript of George Washington’s Farewell Address, the diaries of
Virginia Woolf . . .

As a former journalist, Bohannon was awed by such a vast collection of information.
As a book collector, he was a little covetous. As Joe Rodriguez’s sidekick, he was
scuttling to keep pace as Rodriguez raced through corridors, ducked inside obscure
doors, and darted down spiral staircases.

Rodriguez cut to his left and stepped into a brightly lit office. “Listen, Sammy,
I need your help.”

Swinging away from his computer to face the two men was a muscular, compact, Mediterranean-looking
man with a dense shock of jet black hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses. “Sammy,
this is my brother-in-law, Tom. Tom, this is Sammy Rizzo, the best mind in this whole
mausoleum.”

Sammy Rizzo hopped off his chair, and Bohannon scrambled to cover his surprise. Rizzo
was short, the top of his head barely reaching to Bohannon’s belt buckle. Rizzo came
toward Bohannon, a sly grin on his face, offering a small, pudgy hand.

“Hi, Tom, glad to meet you,” said Sammy, a smile spreading under his hooked nose.
“Yeah, I’m a dwarf. But hey, get over it. I have. So, Joe, what can I do for you?”
Sammy turned away from the speechless Bohannon.

“Sammy, first, I’ve got to tell you that this is for me, not for the library,” said
Rodriguez.

“Well, let’s sit down. This might be a lengthy conversation.” Rizzo motioned for Joe
and Tom to sit at a small, round, meeting table just off the center of the room.

Rizzo’s office was small but exquisitely customized. In the corner farthest from the
door was a horseshoe-shaped desk that reminded Bohannon of the “slot” desks designed
for editors at a newspaper. But instead of having a news editor inside the curve of
the horseshoe and other deskmen arranged around the outside, Rizzo’s desk was shallow
enough for him to access the entire surface. One flat-screen computer sat at the apex
of the horseshoe, where Rizzo had been sitting when they entered, and another flat-screen
computer was located on the left wing of the horseshoe. The surface of the right wing
was elevated from the rear, like a drafting table, with two huge lamps overhanging
it. Across from the desk, flanking the door, was a floor-to-ceiling window that let
in much of the light and helped this subterranean room feel less claustrophobic.

Bohannon settled into a chair. Everything was designed to Rizzo’s scale, though his
desktop and the meeting table were set at an average height.

Rizzo grabbed the chair from his desk and rolled it toward them. He pushed a lever,
and the chair body dropped, allowing him to easily climb aboard. Pushing another lever,
Sammy popped up to eye level. “Okay, so it’s not library business. Thank God. I need
something interesting to keep me from going completely nuts.”

Rodriguez looked sideways to Bohannon, who gave him a resigned nod of his head. “Sammy
. . .” Rodriguez hesitated, trying to shape into words what he needed to say. “I’ve
known you a long time . . .”

“Wait a minute,” Sammy interjected, his voice a threat. “I’m Gracie’s god-father.
And remember, I’m the one who keeps Deirdre company all summer while you camp out
at Yankee Stadium. So if you’re gonna tell me you’ve got another woman, I don’t want
to hear another word. If you’re here to borrow money, it’s got to be less than six
figures. Or if Bohannon here is in the CIA and you’re recruiting me to infiltrate
Al Qaeda in Pakistan, I’ll think about it.”

Rizzo glared menacingly first at Rodriguez, then at Bohannon.

Despite himself, Bohannon burst out laughing, only to be immediately joined by both
Rizzo and Rodriguez.

“Sammy, you are nuts,” Rodriguez said.

“Okay, come on, whatcha got for me?” Sammy asked, rubbing together his knobbled hands.

Sobering up, Rodriguez looked at his old friend. “Tom and I have found something that
I don’t understand, something we’re trying to figure out. But, Sammy, there’re a few
things I’ve got to tell you before we get started. One is, we’re not going to tell
you everything. Forgive me. I trust you with my life; you know that. But I need you
to trust me. You don’t want to know it all. So, if you push too far, I’m just gonna
shut down.”

Rizzo nodded his head in agreement, even more intrigued.

“Second, I’ve brought you only a portion of what we found. It’s a small portion, a
rough copy that I made myself. But I hope it’s enough for you to help us get started.
And lastly, I need you to promise, seriously, that you won’t breathe a word of this
to anyone, especially not anyone here at the library.”

Sammy Rizzo, head cocked to one side, contemplated the request, but only for a heartbeat.
“You’ve got my word.”

“Okay,” said Joe.

Rodriguez reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat and pulled out the paper
on which he had painstakingly copied a small portion of the scroll’s text. He unfolded
it and turned it around so Sammy could take a look. “Have you ever seen anything like
this?” Rodriguez continued to hold the paper while Rizzo scanned it intensely, leaning
in from his chair.

“Hmm . . . let’s put it over here on the table,” Sammy said. He swiveled his chair
toward the elevated section of the desk and snapped on one of the large, hooded lamps.

Rodriguez spread the paper on the table, pinning down its edges.

“Been a long time,” Sammy said, slowly grazing his fingers over the symbols written
on the paper. “Been a long time.”

Rizzo dropped off his chair, toward a low set of shelves. Sorting through a stack
of binders, Sammy pulled one clear. He grabbed his chair and rolled it in front of
the computer screen. Bohannon noticed the specially rigged keyboard and mouse combination
that swung out to meet the chair. Rizzo’s fingers flew over the keyboard, darting
in and out of Web sites, opening and closing pages.

“If this is what I believe it is, it is very rare,” he said without looking over his
shoulder. “Makes me wonder where you got it. And what—Wait, here it is. Joe, take
a look at this.”

Sammy pushed himself away from the computer terminal so Bohannon and Rodriguez could
move closer and get a better look at the screen.

Before their eyes were several characters in what looked like an ancient script. “Here,
let me print it out,” said Rizzo. Grabbing the sheet of paper as it emerged from the
printer, Rizzo kicked a shelf at the side of his computer table and propelled his
chair toward the drafting table, Rodriguez guiding it the final few feet. “Here, Joe,
you scan it,” Rizzo said, handing the sheet of paper to Rodriguez. As Bohannon watched
from behind, Rodriguez slowly moved the paper with the printed characters above and
beside the columns of characters they had brought with them. The two sets of symbols
had clear similarities—sweeping curves and extended, pointed tails.