The Sacred Cipher Read online

  “That’s it,” said Rodriguez, “that’s what is inside this little circle.”

  “So what’s it supposed to be?” Bohannon asked of no one in particular. “Those characters don’t look anything like the Demotic characters on the scroll. There’s no comparison. If it’s a signature, if the guy who wrote this message was signing his name, then why didn’t he sign it in Demotic? Why go to all this trouble to create this scroll in a dead language and then sign it in something else?”

  “Because it’s a hallmark,” said a voice from behind them. “It’s the writer’s mark, his seal.” Richard Johnson stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand. “Identify the seal, and you will identify the author.”

  Rizzo snatched up the sheet of paper with the hallmark symbols and jogged over to the computer. “Let’s go baby,” he said, powering up the computer. “Come on, let’s hunt down this shy author.”

  As Rizzo and Rodriguez peered into the computer screen, Bohannon watched Johnson fall into the nearest chair. “Dr. Johnson, Doc, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

  Slowly, as if he were sleepwalking, Johnson turned his attention to Bohannon, a placid resolve on his face, a fearful wildness in his eyes. “Why, why do you ask?” he said from some distance Bohannon couldn’t reach.

  “You look like you’re about to collapse. Doc, what happened?”

  Johnson’s expression gradually faded from ambivalence to a quizzical uncertainty. “Have you ever seen something but then wondered if that was actually what you saw?” Johnson paused. “I was taking the train back from Trinity, waiting at Rector Street for the 1-and-9 . . . leaning up against a pole near the front of the platform . . . lost in thought about what I just learned from the rector at Trinity. The train was coming into the station, and I looked to my left, you know, to see which train it was. I must have hooked my arm around the pole at the same time, I guess. I’m not sure . . .”

  Johnson fumbled through the story, and Bohannon’s mind sorted out the pieces. As Johnson had turned to identify the number of the incoming train, there was a commotion behind him. To his right, two voices exclaimed. Reflexively, Johnson had pressed closer to the pole and quickly pivoted himself to the right. A rushing body brushed past his, a hand glancing off the edge of his right shoulder. The body—it was a man, in workman’s clothes—flashed past. The man appeared to stumble, twisting and turning toward Johnson, his hands outstretched, as he fell in front of the oncoming train. Screams, the screech of brakes, and the smell of oil burning against hot metal filled the platform.

  “It all happened so fast. It was terrible. I can still see it and still hear it, the thud and the screeching of metal-on-metal brakes at the same time. It looked as if, at the last moment, he changed his mind and was trying to save himself. And I’m wondering, could I have gotten my arm out in time, somehow, to hold him back? Was there something I could have done?”

  A sadness as blank as snow in fog covered Johnson’s countenance. “I could have saved him . . . I should have saved him.”

  Bohannon squatted down in front of Johnson’s chair, coming eye-to-eye with the doctor, putting his arm on Johnson’s shoulder. “Doc, listen to me, look at me. This was not your fault. It’s not your fault this man took his own life. He was obviously determined. Even if he had a doubt at the end, he was the one who sent himself running across that platform. There was a split second of time; no one could have reacted fast enough to save that guy, not you, not a professional athlete. Come on, don’t beat yourself up with guilt. Sadness at a man’s meaningless death? Sure. Shock at being so close to death? Yeah, I know about that. But guilt? No, Doc, that’s not yours to carry. The guilt was carried by that man as he threw himself in front of that train. It was his sin, not yours.”

  Johnson’s eyes softened with gratitude and relief.

  “You’re right . . . You’re right, Tom. You know, I’ve got to admit that I have never believed in sin. Foolish idea. We’re just here, doing our best. Sure, there’s right and wrong. But sin? In order to have sin, there has to be a God to sin against. Foolish idea. There’s just no proof,” said Johnson, turning to include Rizzo and Rodriguez. “But today, I saw sin. I saw sin flash behind me. I saw sin as a man threw away his life in front of a train. He had no right to do that. Who did he leave behind? Who will be grieving for him tonight? That’s wrong; that is sin.

  “And I just can’t get that last image out of my mind,” said Johnson. “The man’s face, looking at me, his eyes wide, his hands outstretched. He was closer to me than you are. I could hear his breath escape. And as the train flashed past, that necklace, a cross of some kind, with a lightning bolt going through it, hanging motionless in the air, then gone, snapped away with a crushing force.”

  Bohannon felt as if his face, his head, his body was being sucked right into Johnson’s eyes, into his mouth, into his brain. He was losing contact with the present.

  “Wha . . . what did you just say?”

  As Bohannon finished his tale of the runaway truck and the two men with the odd-looking crosses around their necks, a heavy stillness entered the room. The four of them sat around the table cluttered with forgotten work. Now they knew they were hunted. Bohannon feared Johnson was close to shock. Having someone try to kill him could do that. There were predators out there, a cabal of killers who obviously were determined to protect the scroll’s secret, whatever it was.

  “Any luck at Trinity?” Bohannon spoke the words softly, gently, but they broke explosively into the silence of men considering their own mortality.

  “The rector was helpful,” Johnson responded hesitantly, “more than accommodating, really.” Gradually, the color came back into his cheeks as he warmed, physically and emotionally. “We had a wonderful discussion about the early history of New Amsterdam. But alas, no significant light was shed on Elias Schwartzman. At least not information we need, even though we searched the church archives. Plenty of documents have not been archived, so there may still be vital information available from the church, but that would be a formidable project. One I thought best to put in abeyance until we exhaust every other avenue.”

  “Speaking of archives,” Rizzo chirped from in front of the computer screen, “I’ve uncovered a Web site that will search hallmarks. Just trying to draw . . . hmm . . . got to get this right. Trying to draw the symbols inside the circle. Okay, looks good. Let’s go fishin’.”

  The hard drive jumped into motion, whirring and clicking as it raced around the world of cyberspace, looking for a match to the interesting symbol. Rizzo anxiously watched the screen.

  “If this search doesn’t work, what do you think our next step should be?” Rodriguez asked. “I don’t know—”

  “Bingo,” Rizzo barked. “Gotcha, sucker. The letters are Phoenician . . . ‘aleph’ and ‘resh’ . . . and they’ve matched to a hallmark.”

  He was quickly surrounded, each pair of eyes trying to read the screen faster than the others.

  Abiathar—leader of a Jewish religious community in Palestine in the eleventh century.

  “That’s it?” said Rizzo, stunned at the brevity of the message. “That’s all they know about this guy? A multibillion-bit world system, and all they’ve got is one sentence? Criminy, we’re still skunked.”

  12

  Rizzo ran into Joe the following morning at the corner coffee-monger, the portable, stainless steel stalls that dotted hundreds of corners in Midtown where men with accents rapidly dispensed coffee, tea, bagels, and attitude, this one conveniently situated on Fifth Avenue, just outside the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

  “Hey, Godzilla, I’ve been thinking,” said Rizzo.

  “You aren’t even awake yet.”

  “Yeah, but listen . . . I’ve been trying to come up with some way to unlock information about this Abiathar, our mysterious author. Last night I whipped through the Internet and uncovered several Abiathars, but nearly any of them could have been our man. We ain’t gonna find out scratch that way.”
/>   Rizzo scrambled up the ramp to the side door of the library, Rodriguez climbing the stairs beside him.

  “We need an expert,” said Rodriguez, “someone with a broad knowledge of early Middle Eastern history. There’s George Pappadoukus in the Reading Room.”

  Rizzo nearly dropped his Lipton with lemon. “Make me barf,” he squawked. “I wouldn’t talk to that Greek geek if he was my only ticket to Mariah Carey. He wanted my job, and it feels like he wants me to die from paper cuts anytime we’re in the same room. Stuff that one.”

  Walking toward the staff elevators, Rizzo grasped for other options.

  “There’s another guy over at Columbia, where I got my master’s,” said Rodriguez, “but this guy is years removed from ‘feet on the ground’ experience, and that’s going to be critical.”

  Rizzo felt his heart flutter and his gut twist. “Maybe I have an answer,” he said, getting on the down elevator while Joe continued on to the periodicals room.

  Kallie Nolan was a dicey choice, one fraught with anxiety for Rizzo, but the only one he could come up with at the moment. Nolan was studying at Tel Aviv University for her doctorate in biblical archaeology and, almost as difficult a task, to earn the rare and highly coveted title of “garden guide.” With the heavy workload she was already carrying, asking her to join in a wild-goose chase to track down some information on this Abiathar guy was asking a lot. But Rizzo didn’t know where else to turn, so he typed out a quick e-mail and hoped for a positive reply.

  Just about a week later, on a Tuesday, Sammy was knocking on Joe’s office door, the bottom of his New York Jets’ Brett Favre game jersey dusting the marble floor.

  “Joe, open up, you’ve got to read this,” Sammy shouted through the mail slot at the midpoint of the door to Rodriguez’s office. “C’mon, this is good stuff.”

  Rizzo nearly fell on his face as the door jerked open. “It better be good,” Rodriguez snapped. “I was up all night, my wife is getting really sick of this schedule, and yesterday I fell asleep on my desk for two hours. One of these days, I’ve got to get some work done.”

  Sammy bounced from foot to foot with anticipation, and finally, Rodriguez got the point.

  “What is it?” he barked.

  “I was wondering when you would come to your senses,” said Rizzo, climbing into a chair. “Here, it’s a printout of an e-mail I just got from Kallie. We’re starting to put the dots together.”

  Rizzo had met Kallie Nolan several years ago when Kallie was doing archaeological research in the library and had become a regular denizen of the stacks. She became lost in the labyrinthine hallways one day, and Rizzo came to her rescue. After that, she would often stop by Rizzo’s office for hot tea and interesting conversation. The relationship became strained after Rizzo made a pass at her, so there had been no telling if she would respond or just ignore his request. It had taken several days, but Kallie had responded to Sammy’s initial e-mail with almost nine pages of information.

  Rodriguez took the printout, stepped around his desk, and sat in the specially designed ergonomic chair that relieved the constant back pain from too many years of competitive basketball. Rizzo looked forward to his visits to Rodriguez’s office. It was so much warmer and more inviting than Rizzo’s sterile glass-and-steel enclosure in the underground stacks. Just off the periodicals room of the massive Humanities and Social Sciences Library, a room that could have fit perfectly in any Tudor mansion in England, Rodriguez’s office was a bibliophile’s dream—floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases on three walls, leaded glass windows dominating the fourth. His desk and filing cabinets were in matching oak, as was the floor, all complemented by an authentic Persian rug. Rodriguez had inherited the office and its furnishings when he’d been promoted, and Rizzo accorded him great credit in that he had changed nothing during his tenure except the desk chair that kept his back pain in check. Rizzo loved this office, and often daydreamed himself into its confines. When Rodriguez took a quick, questioning look at Rizzo, he impatiently waved Joe back to the text of the e-mail:

  Sammy,

  I’ve done some research on the name you gave me, Abiathar, and he turns out to be a very interesting character.

  First, I’ve got to tell you this request of yours was a blessing. I’ve been struggling to find an appropriate subject for my doctoral thesis, and you dropped one in my lap. Below is what I’ve found out thus far, and I hope it’s what you’re looking for. I hope the form is okay—I’ve already started work on the thesis, so I cut and pasted a copy of what I’ve written so far. It reads a little bit like a fourth-grade geography text, but this is the preliminary draft, framing information from a mishmash of sources before I fill in with a lot more historical background. I’ve included all the information because I think it will help make more sense of Abiathar’s story.

  ***

  Faced with Jewish rebellion against Caesar, Roman legions swept into Jerusalem in 70 AD, destroyed and dismantled the temple, Herod’s Palace, and any vestige of Jewish sovereignty. Every Jew who remained alive was banished from the city and all the areas near the city. For nearly a thousand years, Jewish elders desperately tried to hold together a community that had lost the center of its universe.

  Jewish life up to that point had been based on Jewish law interpreted by Jewish scholars.

  In this new world, one of the greatest challenges to scholars was how to deal with a law centered on a temple and a priesthood that no longer existed. Much of this original, biblical law dealt not only with temple life, but also the life of a community wholly independent of non-Jewish governance.

  To compensate for this loss of temple and priesthood, the Jews created new structures of governance (the Academy) in place of the Sanhedrin and new, hereditary leaders (the Exhillarch in Babylon; the Gaon in Palestine) in place of the high priests.

  Though exercising significant power in their communities, these Jewish “officials” still served solely at the pleasure of the ruling monarchs. There was an Exhillarch in Babylon—ruler of all the Jews in Persia and Palestine—who could trace his lineage to the royal line of David. The Exhillarch exercised his power through a pair of lieutenants, the Gaonim.

  Early in the eleventh century, wearying of the Jewish “rulers” who interfered with his authority, the caliph of Babylon had them executed, and he abolished the positions. Left without a hierarchical leader, the Jewish community in Palestine established its own hereditary position of Gaon. In 1046, Solomon Ben Judah was appointed Gaon of Palestine, in Jerusalem, and Jewish communities throughout the East were now under his authority, but not always under his control. Financial offerings intended for Palestine were often siphoned off to support Jewish interests in Spain, North Africa, and Egypt, weakening Solomon’s position.

  Solomon died a few years later, having chosen his son Joseph to be Gaon and his other son Elijah to occupy the office of “Av Beit Din” (head of the court). Both Joseph and Elijah were worthy candidates, having studied Scripture and Jewish law and writings since their early childhood. They were “scholars”—students for life who did no other work but to study, understand, and try to interpret the Jewish law. When Joseph died suddenly in 1054, it wasn’t his brother Elijah who ascended to the position of Gaon, as would have been expected.

  After a long wandering, David Azariah, from the house of the former Babylonian Exillarchs and the line of King David, unexpectedly entered Jerusalem. How or why he garnered favor is a mystery. Perhaps it was some good but undeserved reputation that followed him. But after Joseph’s death, David was appointed Gaon and ascended to the highest Jewish authority in the East.

  The people of Jerusalem quickly learned how wrong their choice had been. David proved a nasty judge and spoke ill of both Solomon and Joseph. Stricken by a terrible, unshakable disease in his second year, David Azariah suffered for six years before he died in 1062. Finally, Elijah could step up to the place rightfully intended for him by his father, Solomon, and brother Joseph. Elijah was gladly received as the n
ew Gaon and remained in power for twenty-two eventful years.

  Arguably one of the most widely accepted scholars among the Jewish people since the closing of the Talmud in 500 AD and generally showing a preference for a natural (as opposed to miraculous) redemption for the Jewish people, Elijah had studied with some of the ancient world’s most renowned scholars. Influenced by the rationalist school of thought, and perhaps by the experience of having his rightful title usurped by another, when Elijah was installed as Gaon in Jerusalem in 1062, he established a rational and practical governance for the Jewish community.

  In 1071, centuries of relative peace and calm in Jerusalem came to a sudden, smashing end when Islam finally broke through the Byzantine western borders and a new group of converts rose to power. They were known as the Seljuk Turks, and their brand of Islam was extremist. Their soldiers were assassins, and their eyes were on Jerusalem and Egypt. Overtaking the stable but sleepy Abbasid Empire, the Seljuk Turks marched on Jerusalem with all the fierceness and wrath of bloodthirsty new converts. Always a rationalist, Elijah gathered the Academy members and the Jewish community and fled to the coastal town of Tyre just as the Seljuk swept into Jerusalem.

  For eighteen years, the Gaon Elijah—and his son Abiathar after him—held their exiled community together in Tyre. While free of the Seljuk, Elijah was not free from conflict or controversy. A much revered scholar, judge, and human being, Elijah found himself thrust into leadership of a group steadfastly opposed to another fraud.

  David Ben Daniel, another descendant of the Davidic dynasty, wandered into Egypt and laid claim to the title of Exhillarch. Meborak, the highest official of the Egyptian Jewish community, supported David’s claim. David, though authentic in lineage, was not loyal in heart and mind. Threatened by the powers of Meborak, the Nagid, he then used his high title to end the office and remove any higher authority than himself. Meborak, a much-loved physician, fled in fear of his life to Spain. Over thirteen years, David deposed every legitimate Jewish ruler except Elijah. When the Fatimid Dynasty of Cairo overthrew the Seljuks in 1089, David, his power now extended beyond Egypt by the Fatimids, stripped Abiathar of his title and authority. But the Jews, still loyal to their Gaon, returned to Jerusalem, where they openly resisted David’s tyranny.