The Sacred Cipher Read online

  “Forgive me, Effendi, but I do not have a great deal of time,” the old man said, turning to face Spurgeon. “I have a desire to dispose of this treasure. Perhaps you would be willing to take it off my hands for, say, three thousand piastres?”

  Spurgeon ran his fingers over the cylinder and entered into the obligatory negotiations.

  By the time each had argued, cajoled, and conceded, Spurgeon purchased the purse and the metal tube for fewer than fifteen hundred piastres, only a few English pounds. Spurgeon was quite satisfied with himself. He had just purchased a fine gift, the beautiful silk purse, for his niece’s birthday. Wrapping the tube tightly back into the silk purse, Spurgeon covered it with a discarded section of burlap and tucked it under his arm. Turning to leave, he was startled by two things: first, that the old man had already disappeared into the bazaar and, second, the lurking presence of Mohammed Isfahan, pressed into a darkened doorway across the street.

  Spurgeon’s walk back to his hotel was much more brisk than usual, in spite of the heat.

  1891 • LONDON, ENGLAND

  With a speed that belied his bulk, his umbrella lying on the ground, Spurgeon regained his feet and began running downhill, looking for lights and praying for help. He turned twice, skidding on the stones but not breaking his pace, until he came to much-needed rest in the darkened alcove of the apothecary shop on Weston Street.

  Spurgeon loathed his dread. He mocked himself: where was his faith? Yet hidden from the light, he drank in the night air in the deep draughts of a desperate man and tried to free his mind to make a clear decision. Every shadow became a warrant for his destruction. He held the package loosely, tucked into the large pocket of his woolen overcoat, afraid that if he grasped it too tightly, his anxiety might transmit some signal to those who were in pursuit. Yet he dared not let it go.

  The tide waited for no man and for no ship. If Spurgeon intended to reach the Thames on time—and the cutter sent from the trans-Atlantic steamer Kronos—he had to find a way out of this doorway. He was more convinced than ever that he had to get this package, his precious scroll, on that ship.

  Lord, you are in control, he silently prayed. So why am I so frightened for my life?

  Spurgeon pressed himself deeply into the doorway, seeking the darkness. He held his breath to quiet his gasping, but still his heart hammered in his chest. His eyes, wide with alarm, darted from corner to shadow to alley to street. He strained to extend his ears further into the night. All this he did while holding himself rigidly still.

  A movement, a sound, and his life could end in an instant.

  At any other time, the streets of London would have held a great hope, a feeling of fulfillment, of calling, of destiny. These were his streets and his people, and he had moved through them and walked over them for so long they had almost become a part of him, except for tonight. The streets were the same. The city was the same. The fear was new.

  Rain slanting hard behind the wind drove the sane and the sensible indoors. From the shelter of the darkened shop’s doorway, Spurgeon willed himself to silence. The street was empty except where the rainwater sluiced along the gutter in the middle of the cobblestones. But Spurgeon no longer trusted emptiness. He scanned every dark space for some sign of movement.

  Curse the pies and the pastries and Mrs. Dowell’s cooking. Once a symbol of growing affluence and influence, Spurgeon’s girth now slowed his legs when he needed speed and sapped his endurance as he ran for his life.

  Twenty minutes earlier, Spurgeon had stepped out of his parsonage in Newington, Southwark, and into the driving rain. It was a walk he had taken scores of times before, in good weather and foul. It was a simple task, after all. Walk down to the Thames, where the cutter would dock. Meet his old friend Captain Paradis. Exchange a package and some good wishes. And be off again for the warmth of the fire waiting in his study. A simple task.

  Spurgeon walked quickly down Great Dover Street, toward Weston Street and the Thames, trying not to look over his shoulder. His umbrella helped deflect much of the downpour but also restricted his vision. As he turned into Black Horse Court, by habit, his gaze swiveled to the rear. For weeks, his anxiety had been fed by a foreboding that he was being watched, followed. With the rain pounding on his umbrella, he failed to hear the fast-approaching hoofbeats on the cobblestones. The horse missed him, but the front wheel of the livery wagon caught his shoulder as it flashed past, driving him back to the wall and down to the sidewalk. Spurgeon may have thought it an accident except for the arrow that thudded into the wall next to his head, and the second that clipped his coat as he twisted to look at the first.

  He had fled for his life, leaving both his umbrella and his dignity on Black Horse Court. Now, here he was, not far from his church and his world—cold, wet, hiding in the dark, terrified of some unknown, but very real, threat.

  Spurgeon often wondered if the scroll he held in his pocket would lead others to pursue its path, bringing them to him. Now he had his answer.

  Soaked to the skin, remaining in the dark, Spurgeon twisted his head to the left and tried to look up the street. A shadow moved on the right in a garden, and another on the left in the lee of a stable. But what Spurgeon focused on was the shape coming around the corner and toward his hiding place. Please God, Spurgeon mouthed in silent prayer. The shape slowed and stopped halfway down the street. Spurgeon waited. The door opened and closed, and the shape slowly moved forward. Spurgeon waited. Only as the hansom came abreast of his hiding place did Spurgeon toss himself out of hiding, arm raised. “Cabbie!” Startled, the hansom driver reined up. Spurgeon was already scrambling through the door and into the cab. “Shad Thames, the docks at Curfew Street—quickly, please—we must get there before the tide.”

  A snap of the whip just as Spurgeon spun his head. The cab rocked forward, so he would never be certain. But snatching a look out the rear window as the cab began to move, Spurgeon caught a momentary glimpse of what appeared to be two men clothed in kaftans and kaffiyeh, running in the shadows of the buildings on either side of the street. Two arrows thumped into the back wall of the cab, their pointed barbs his only companions as the cabbie raced to the river.

  1891 • NEW YORK CITY

  “Your wife’s strudel is always the highlight of each crossing.”

  “Thank you, Captain Paradis. As soon as she heard you at the door, she went to the kitchen to prepare one in your honor. But we will both have to wait until after dinner, I’m afraid. Here, sit,” said Louis Klopsch. “What have you brought from Charles this time?”

  Captain Timothy Paradis reached into the canvas boat bag that was propped against his chair, the one with Kronos stitched on its side. “I’m not sure, Dr. Klopsch, but this one is certainly not a book.” Paradis lifted a bundle from the bag and cautiously unwrapped it.

  Making sure debris fell into the boat bag and not onto Mrs. Klopsch’s clean floor, Paradis shook off remnants of sawdust and held aloft an ornately designed, red silk purse. From the purse, he withdrew a metal tube about the size of a collapsed telescope, with designs etched on its surface.

  “Reverend Spurgeon said I was to deliver it to you, and you alone,” said Paradis, passing the tube into Klopsch’s hands. “And I was to do it personally. Reverend Spurgeon was quite emphatic on that point, I must say.”

  Dr. Louis Klopsch’s friendship with the famous London preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon extended well beyond the two years since Klopsch had purchased a unique newspaper owned by Spurgeon, The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times. Klopsch continued publishing the newspaper, and it had grown into a place of prominence among New York City’s faithful.

  Klopsch hefted the metal tube in his hands. “I mentioned to him once that I had an interest in ancient documents,” he said to Paradis. “Now, I have no more room to store the gifts he, and his colleagues, have sent me from around the world. I have a closet there, in the hallway, which is full of books from Dr. Spurgeon. Believe me, I’m grateful. But . . .” Klopsch shrug
ged his shoulders. “And this . . . what could this be? It is very . . .”

  Gerta Klopsch stood silently in the doorway, a towel in her hands, a smile on her full face, and the smell of cabbage swirling in her wake. “It is lovely,” said Gerta. “But I think it must wait. Louis . . . Captain . . . dinner is ready.”

  After two weeks eating in the galley of the Kronos, Paradis was up and out of his chair in a lick.

  “Well, we’ll just put this away for now,” said Klopsch. He returned the tube to the silk purse, which he fastened shut. Entering the hallway to the dining room, Klopsch stopped, turned a key in the lock, and opened the door to a closet.

  “Upon my word,” said Paradis, “I never dreamed you had so many . . . you are right, sir. There is no more room.”

  Klopsch pulled the silk purse tight around the metal tube and wedged it into a small space in the corner of a bottom shelf. “When next you see Charles, please tell him what you witnessed here tonight.” Klopsch closed the door, turned the key, and escorted Paradis down the hall. “Please, tell him no more . . . no more books.”

  The Kronos was moving on the tide, sliding smoothly out of New York harbor, when Captain Timothy Paradis caught the smell of apples on the air and was reminded of Gerta Klopsch’s apple strudel, the last piece of which sat on a bench to his left, wrapped in brown paper. It was then he remembered the letter.

  The letter from Spurgeon to Klopsch that was inside the purse. The letter he had forgotten to tell the doctor about.

  1896 • NEW YORK CITY

  “Louis? Do men from the mission know our address?”

  Dr. Louis Klopsch lowered his newspaper and considered his wife’s question. “No, Gerta. Why do you ask?”

  Gerta Klopsch took a step into the sitting room, her twisting hands tangled in the embroidered apron that tried valiantly to cover her ample proportions. “Today, two men came. Strange men . . . foreign . . . they look like sailors. They come to the gate in back. I surprised them when I went out with wash clothes. They asked for you by name. Who should know we live here?”

  Klopsch laid the paper in his lap, the last gasps of a brittle winter sun barely piercing the windows of their home, a small, two-story Federal-style house in Lower Manhattan. He didn’t like the sounds of this. He and Gerta made their home far enough away from the Bowery Mission—on Ryder’s Alley, a thin, L-shaped lane between Fulton and Gold streets—that none should stumble into their yard by mistake. In the two years since he had purchased the facility, a rescue mission for the homeless and derelict along New York’s infamous Bowery, this was the first time that anything like this had occurred.

  “These men, what was their purpose?” he asked. “Did you inquire why they sought me?”

  “No, Louis . . . forgive me. They ask for you. I say you are not here. And they leave. Quickly. I can ask them nothing more.”

  Klopsch rose, placed the newspaper neatly on his chair, and crossed the room to his wife. He rescued her hands from the wrinkled apron and held them softly in his own. “All is well, Gerta.” He placed a finger under her chin, tilting her face toward his. “There is nothing to fear. I will discover more about these men, of that I am certain.”

  Klopsch was confused, unsure about the sound that woke him that night, until he heard it a second time. Breaking glass.

  He slipped out of bed—fortunately Gerta was a sound sleeper—and pulled his pants under his nightshirt. Suspenders hanging at his sides, Klopsch moved silently to the top of the stairs and listened to the night. He felt a chill draft rising from the floor below, brother to the one rising up his spine. A crackling sound . . . two thumps . . . and Klopsch edged swiftly down the stairs, his body leaning back against the wall.

  Klopsch heard a muffled crack to his left as he cleared the final step. Standing in the foyer, he hesitated for just a moment—should he grab his heavy-handled walking stick or try to light the gas lamp? In that brief moment, a dark shape backed out from the closet to his left and into the hall. The shape appeared to be carrying bundles in his arms.

  “Stop!” Klopsch grabbed the stick in his right hand and raised it over his head. Feet ran into the darkness, the back door burst open, and two shadows fled into the yard before Klopsch could move an inch.

  Gerta, her hand to her mouth, stared at the pile of discarded books in the hallway, the glass scattered on the floor of the sitting room, as Klopsch came back from securing the back door.

  “Louis, what is this?” she whispered. “Your desk.” She waved a hand at the mangled papers and broken bindings pulled from overflowing bookshelves. She turned to glance at the broken door to the closet. “Your books. Why should someone do this?”

  “Bandits . . . robbers, I suppose. Perhaps they were searching for money.”

  Klopsch walked over to the closet door. The wood was shattered, the broken lock lying on the floor. He picked up one of the old, leather books from where it had been thrown into the hallway.

  “They were searching, yes . . . but not money,” said Gerta. “Perhaps those men from today come back.”

  It was an old book. Written in Latin. He stroked the leather binding, straightened the gilded edges where they were gouged. “Why would anyone want to steal these books?”

  Klopsch picked the books up from the floor and, one by one, returned them to the shelves in the closet. He was no fool. Neither was Gerta. Danger lived here.

  “Perhaps in your new office, you should a safe put.” Gerta’s brow furrowed at the closet with the shattered door, the one that held so many of Spurgeon’s treasures. “A big safe.”

  PART ONE

  CIPHER’S CALL

  1

  THE PRESENT • NEW YORK CITY

  Tom Bohannon looked at the gap between the ladder and the scaffold. It wasn’t that far. Tim Maybry, the construction manager, had just done it, stepped off the ladder with a spring, landing on the wooden plank while grabbing the metal scaffold frame with both hands. It wasn’t that far. But once he stepped off the ladder, there was no going back. It was either land on the wooden plank or land on the hard, ceramic tile floor thirty feet below.

  Bohannon, slightly overweight, but still fit in his late fifties, stood on the ladder and knew two things. He wasn’t going to get on the scaffold without getting off the ladder. And if he wanted to see what was on the other side, what had so excited his construction manager, he needed to get on the scaffold. Eyes fixed on the wooden plank, he stepped into space. A flashing moment of panic, and he was there, grabbing the metal scaffold, pulling in a deep breath. Looking to the left, he saw Tim waiting, smiling. “Okay,” Bohannon said with a shrug. “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  Keeping his eyes straight ahead, Bohannon inched his way along the plank on the scaffolding and ducked into a very snug space behind the organ pipes. Maybry was in front of him, leading the way through the tight, dark crawl space between the pipes and the wall. Maybry disappeared to the right. Reaching the same spot, Bohannon peeked into a short, narrow crevice. He followed Maybry, shimmying through a hole that had been punched in the wall.

  Bohannon hit the floor with a thud. He didn’t care. His eyes had already been scanning the room, flashing back and forth, astounded at what he was seeing, a secret room hidden behind the organ pipes in the chapel of the Bowery Mission.

  The room was tucked in behind the organ pipes, hard against the connecting wall of what had been a casket maker’s factory a hundred years ago, suspended, high up in the vaulted ceiling, at the very rear of the Bowery Mission’s chapel. Coated with decades of dust, Tom Bohannon, executive director of the mission, saw that the room was furnished in antiques: a large, oak desk against the wall facing the organ pipes, with a matching chair; on the side, a row of six, four-drawer oak filing cabinets; and against the far wall, a large, antique safe that occupied the entire wall. The room was small, the ceiling less than six feet off the floor. Bohannon had to stoop to maneuver his way around the small space. Within moments, he and Maybry were covered in soot and dus
t.

  “We found it by accident, this morning,” Maybry said as Bohannon crossed to the rank of filing cabinets and began opening the drawers. “One of the workers dropped his hammer, and it must have fallen through a crack and into the room. When he went behind the organ pipes and couldn’t find it, he realized there must be something behind this wall. You know these guys. You’ve got to watch them all the time.”

  “Is Henry Chang running this job?” Bohannon asked as he rifled through the file folders in another drawer.

  “Not on this job,” Maybry said, wiping his hand through the dust on the desk. “I’ve got a crew of guys from the Middle East—Lebanese they said, but hey, who knows these days. They must need the work because their bid came in under the Chinese. Anyway, my foreman came up as the guy was digging a hole in the wall, and here we are.”

  Bohannon started working on the second cabinet, flipping through the files, his back to Maybry. “How could anybody ever get in here?” Bohannon asked as he opened another drawer.

  “This room is part of the original building, before they purchased the casket maker’s building behind,” said Maybry. “Before the organ bellows was removed, there must have been a way to get up here to clean the bellows. It looks like the door was over here in the corner. For some reason, it was covered over, and the room was forgotten. Hard to believe, with all this nice furniture.”

  “Hard to believe; that’s an understatement,” said Bohannon as he began rifling through the files faster and faster. Behind him, he heard Maybry move toward him.

  “Do you know what this place is?” asked Bohannon, turning to face Maybry with a pack of file folders in his hand. “It’s the office of Dr. Louis Klopsch, the first president of the Bowery Mission. These files, these cabinets, appear to be filled with Klopsch’s records, the ledgers of the mission, and copies of all his correspondence.”