The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) Read online

  The response came from the floor. “A book I was shown in the Egyptian desert.”

  Rizzo kept his focus on the folded paper in his hands and, as he unfolded it once more, Tom noticed that it was the pamphlet distributed at the memorial service. Kallie’s picture was on the cover.

  “It’s a book with all the answers,” said Rizzo.

  2

  EIGHT DAYS EARLIER

  The Egyptian desert

  It was a large cavern, well away from the sandstorm that wailed across the cave opening on the desert ridge far above. Dual-mantle, gas-fired lanterns not only lit up the space but also added heat that kept the dampness at bay. Within the cavern resided a small tent city—canvas-covered, sparsely populated, adobe-walled structures randomly scattered around the circumference of the cavern and a larger, open-sided tent in the middle of the space with a cooking pit in the center flanked by tables. A dog barked off to the left. The rich, thick aroma of hay and animal stalls hovered in the open space. Straight ahead, as the Jeep carrying Rizzo and his two rescuers entered the cavern, was the community’s main structure—an adobe building the size of a large church—the headquarters of the Temple Guard.

  The two guard members in the front of the Jeep were dressed in the iconic outfits that appeared to identify their members—red-checked keffiyeh held in place by two black ropes, their ends trailing onto the leather vest they wore over a white, muslin shirt. Well-worn, blousy blue pants, kept in place by a wide red sash, were tucked into calf-high leather boots. The leader, Hassan, pulled the Jeep in front of the main building. He turned in his seat.

  “Welcome to our modest home,” said Hassan. “Few have seen this place who are not of the guardians.”

  The night before, Hassan and his cousin had rescued Rizzo from St. Antony’s Monastery in the eastern Sahara Desert and from the clutches of the assassins of the Prophet’s Guard who murdered Doc and had the same plans for Rizzo. Through the night, their Jeep had raced across the desert, reaching this cave moments before a sandstorm obliterated visibility.

  Hassan jumped out of the Jeep and picked up the book that rested between the front seats, the book they had rescued from St. Antony’s Monastery along with Rizzo. “Come, we will show you what you seek to know.”

  Both Hassan and his cousin had a rifle slung over their shoulder, a bandolier of cartridges strapped across their chest, and a short scimitar tucked into the sash.

  In any other circumstance, in spite of the weapons, Sammy would have been comforted by the genuine warmth and concern that radiated from Hassan’s face. A black mustache, the size of a forest, exploded under his prodigious nose and dropped off each side of his mouth to frame his chin. His eyes were as black as the ocean depths but filled with the fire of life and a gladness of spirit. A ragged, screaming pink scar ran from his left cheek, across the eyebrow of his left eye, above his nose, and across his brow until it disappeared beneath the keffiyeh.

  But in this circumstance, with Doc’s lifeless body left lying in that cold, monk’s cell, there was comfort neither in Rizzo’s escape nor in his rescuers.

  “I don’t care what you have to show me,” said Rizzo, dragging his battered body from the Jeep. “It just doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Perhaps. Come,” said Hassan. He put one hand on Rizzo’s shoulder and led him into the great hall.

  Inside, Hassan turned to the left and entered a small, low-ceilinged room. In the center was a wooden table, with a book resting on a stand in the middle of the table, enclosed in what looked like a glass box. Hassan laid down the book he brought from the Jeep, lifted the glass, removed the other book and put it beside the first. Rizzo pushed up against the top of the table to get a better look.

  Like an archaeologist sifting sand, looking for a buried treasure, Hassan caressed open a page of one book then did the same to the other. With the utmost care he turned page after page. Suddenly, with an audible sigh, he stopped and turned to his cousin. “They are identical, in what they contain and in what they are missing. We are no closer to the answer.”

  In spite of his despair, and the bruises inflicted by the ancient Jeep as it careened across the desert, Rizzo was drawn to the futile resignation of Hassan’s words.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Rizzo. “Why have you brought me here?”

  “Because of this … these books,” said Hassan, waving a hand at the leather-bound books on the table. “You and your friends have been searching. This is what you have been looking for. Here … let’s sit.” Hassan’s cousin dragged a wooden bench from the corner of the room up to the edge of the table and then left the room.

  “Both the Prophet’s Guard and Temple Guard possess copies of this book,” said Hassan. “They are incomplete copies. Combined with what we know of the mezuzah and the scroll, these books have kept us locked in relentless battle with the Prophet’s Guard for nearly a thousand years. Here. Let me explain.”

  Hassan swept the red-checked keffiyeh from his head and dropped it on the table. Scratching his head, he settled into the corner of the bench. Rizzo hopped up into the opposite corner.

  “More than nine hundred years ago, some Crusaders came to St. Antony’s Monastery. Part of a lay order, the Brotherhood of Saint Antony, they were on a pilgrimage to fulfill a vow. But they brought with them a scroll holder, or mezuzah, which they left at the monastery.

  “The Coptic monks who occupied the monastery knew the scroll was written in Demotic, an ancient Egyptian language, but none of them could decipher what was on the scroll. Two hundred years later, another pilgrim made his way to the monastery, a Coptic skilled in ancient languages and a lover of puzzles. It took five years but this man broke the code and revealed the message.”

  Rizzo was startled. “You know … they knew?”

  “You are not the only men to solve this puzzle. The monks of St. Antony’s Monastery knew for seven hundred years there was a Jewish temple hidden under the sacred mount in Jerusalem.”

  “But why not reveal the secret?” Rizzo asked, his mind rebelling at the new information.

  “How? They were here, stuck in the desert. Who would they tell? Jerusalem was over three hundred kilometers away, a two-month journey. So instead, they hid the mezuzah and its scroll in a small crypt carved into the foundation of the library building.

  “Ultimately, the few brother monks who knew of the mezuzah formed a group of guardians; the Temple Guardians they called themselves. They swore on their faith in the cross of the Christ to protect the scroll, its mezuzah, and its message—to keep it a secret until the right moment, the right time to reveal the existence of this hidden temple.

  “But the monastery is isolated. Even after the monks built their massive, defensive walls, St. Antony’s was an inviting target for bandits and nomadic Bedouins. Soon the Temple Guardians became more warriors than monks, determined to keep the mezuzah safe, and secret.

  “Eventually, knowledge of the mezuzah and the scroll—most importantly, of its message—came to a follower of Islam. No wall could deter that man and his Muslim brothers. The scroll’s message was a threat to the Haram al-Sharif if knowledge of a hidden temple became known. These Muslim men also took a vow, to serve the defiled cross. A Coptic cross, like ours, with a lightning bolt slashing through on the diagonal.

  “These warriors, who called themselves the Prophet’s Guard, attacked the monastery, massacred the monks, and stole the mezuzah.”

  Rizzo was looking down at his boots, swinging his legs back and forth as he assimilated this new information. A critical question crashed into his thoughts. “Wait … once the Prophet’s Guard got ahold of the mezuzah, why not destroy it? Get rid of the evidence?”

  Hassan nodded his head. “A shrewd question, my friend. Destroying the mezuzah and its scroll would have solved one problem. But there is much about the mezuzah we have yet to learn, other clues to an ultimate secret all of us still seek. So our enemies hid the mezuzah while they continued their search.”

  �
�But,” said Rizzo, “I thought the Temple Guard brought the mezuzah to the Bibliotheca de Historique in Suez?”

  Outside in the larger cavern, a dog barked. Hassan lifted his head, peering out the entrance to the small chamber as if looking through the thousand years.

  “Many generations have killed and pillaged in pursuit of the scroll,” said Hassan, “and it changed hands many times. Nearly two hundred years ago, my ancestors of the Temple Guard captured the mezuzah once more and took it to the French, where it was held in great secrecy, where they thought it was safe. But the Prophet’s Guard once again learned of its hiding place and raided the Scroll Room, killing many of my brothers. For over one hundred years, we heard nothing of the scroll, though we monitored the movements of the Prophet’s Guard closely. It wasn’t long before we discovered they no longer possessed the scroll, either. We thought it was lost to us forever.”

  Rizzo ran his mind through the rest of the story—how Charles Spurgeon purchased the mezuzah and its printed silk cover while wandering the streets of Alexandria; how the Prophet’s Guard followed its trail to London; how Spurgeon dispatched the hunted mezuzah to his friend Louis Klopsch at the Bowery Mission in New York City.

  He looked around the nearly empty room, turned to look out the door into the bleak reaches of the cavern. “And you’ve been living here for a hundred years … waiting?”

  Hassan shook his head, a smile rising under his mountainous mustache. “No, I’m afraid we’re not that gallant. A few months ago we received word that the Prophet’s Guard was once again in pursuit of the scroll. A call went out to my brothers of the undefiled Coptic cross, who began to gather here in hope.”

  An overriding question kept interrupting Rizzo’s thoughts.

  “But why do you still care? What difference does it make to you, or to the Prophet’s Guard, who has the scroll? Not only has the message been deciphered but the Temple has been found and destroyed. What good is the scroll to you? Why … why are you here?”

  Hassan’s smile held no warmth. “It is not only the scroll we seek. In that you are correct. But there is a greater treasure, a treasure of which you have not dreamed.” He turned toward the table, lifted one of the books, and pulled it close. “A treasure whose secret may be held within these books.”

  3

  AUGUST 28

  7:18 p.m., Rabbi Fineman’s home, Jerusalem

  “So what were these books?” asked Bohannon. “What was this treasure?”

  Rizzo got up off the floor, his legs tight after relaying the story of the Temple Guard. He pushed his shoulders back, stretched his neck, put the much-folded pamphlet into his jacket pocket, and looked at the faces staring back at him.

  “The books were incomplete copies of a book called the Aleppo Codex. The rabbi knows more about it than I do, but the Aleppo Codex is supposedly the most accurate representation of the Jewish Torah in existence. Why it’s important to us is because of a message that is apparently contained in the margin notations. It’s a message that completes a link between the mezuzah, Jeremiah, and Aaron’s staff—the shepherd’s staff symbol that we found on the mezuzah, in the St. Antony exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania, carved over the doorpost of the library at St. Antony’s Monastery, scratched into the wall of Jeremiah’s Grotto here in Jerusalem—”

  “And on the sarcophagus I found in Jeremiah’s tomb in Ireland,” reminded Brandon McDonough.

  “Right,” said Rizzo, “and in Jeremiah’s tomb. Think about this. We know Abiathar sent two messages to Meborak in Egypt—that the Third Temple of God had been constructed and hidden under Temple Mount and that the biblical Tent of Meeting was concealed by the prophet Jeremiah in a cave in the Negev Desert. Abiathar knew he would need one of these two objects to restore ritual sacrifice for the Jewish people, return the presence of God into the Temple, and reestablish Israel as the Chosen People. But, in order to complete the circle from ritual sacrifice to the presence of God, Abiathar needed more than just the Temple or the Tent. He needed power … the power of God. Either the mercy seat, the symbol of God’s presence in the Holy of Holies; or the Ark of the Covenant; or, more importantly, the power that radiated from the Ark, the power that went before Israel into battle, the power that conquered the Promised Land.

  “The story written in the margins of the book of Jeremiah was Abiathar’s third message: where to find the power.

  “The Ark of the Covenant was not powerful in itself. What was inside the Ark provided the power … the shepherd’s staff … the most powerful weapon in the history of the world.” He looked across the room to the sofa. “Rabbi, I think you better take it from here.”

  Bohannon was tired and frustrated, his body sore from the damage inflicted during the chase to save Annie and Kallie from their kidnappers. He wanted answers, not a long-winded lecture. But Rizzo’s mention of the world’s most powerful weapon grabbed his attention. Fineman wouldn’t let it go.

  The rabbi spun a tale of the codex, a book written in the tenth century that contained the most accurate compilation of the Tanakh, the twenty-four holy books of the Hebrew Bible. It was captured by the Crusaders, ransomed by Jews in Egypt, hidden for centuries in a cave under the main synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, and returned to Israel 850 years later, in 1958. But, by then, only half remained intact.

  While the book’s history was interesting, it was the story in the margins of the book of Jeremiah that brought Bohannon fully alert.

  Fineman was staring through a darkened window, gazing absently into the Jerusalem night. “Did you know it was Aaron’s staff specifically that brought forth six of the ten plagues against Egypt?” He turned from the window and crossed the room to a bookcase, speaking as he searched the shelves. “Moses or Aaron stretched out their hand and used the staff to call down the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, hail, locusts, and darkness.

  “It was Aaron’s staff that Moses waved over the Red Sea to part the waters and lead Israel to safety, the staff that called down fire from heaven to destroy the rebellious Hebrews as Israel wandered in the desert for forty years.”

  Fineman removed an old book from the shelves, carried the book across the room and laid it in Bohannon’s hands. “In rabbinical literature, particularly in this Haggadic Modification, it is taught that this staff has been handed down from generation to generation throughout the biblical history of man. That it passed through the hands of Shem, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ancient Jewish authors claim that Joshua used the staff to part the waters of the Jordan River and to hit the walls of Jericho before they came crashing down; that David used it to slay Goliath; that Solomon used it as his scepter when he sat on the throne of Israel; and that when Messiah comes—when the Temple is rebuilt and sacrifice returns to the Temple—Messiah will receive Aaron’s staff as his scepter of authority.”

  “The Temple?” said Bohannon. “We’re back to the Temple?”

  “Getting pretty interested now?” asked Rizzo, patting Bohannon on his good arm.

  There was a glimmer of light flickering at the edges of Rizzo’s eyes, a sliver of that impish smile nudging the corners of his mouth. Life, struggling for space. For the first time in days, Bohannon felt hope.

  But Fineman’s words, about the origins of Aaron’s staff, seized Bohannon’s attention once again.

  “Rabbinical literature asserts that this staff was delivered into the hands of Adam when he was driven out of Paradise. The story is told that Aaron’s staff is a fragment of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, severed from the tree by God, for man to carry until the Messiah returns.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Bohannon slid forward in his chair, holding the book in front of him.

  “Aaron’s staff was part of the Tree of Life?” asked Rodriguez.

  “No,” said Fineman, returning to the sofa and sitting next to McDonough. “There were two trees in the garden—the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the latter that God commanded Adam and Eve not
to eat. When they sinned and God exiled them from the garden, God severed the staff from the tree and gave it to Adam. From there it passed down through the ages in the hands of Israel’s leaders.”

  Bohannon looked at Fineman and McDonough. “Okay. So what does this Aleppo Codex book and Aaron’s staff have to do with us?”

  “Only half of the original Aleppo Codex remains intact,” Fineman said. “Over two hundred pages have either been lost or destroyed, including a segment from the book of Jeremiah. But the Masoretic notes surrounding what remains of the book of Jeremiah tell a story that Jeremiah was the last person known to have possession of the Ark of the Covenant, the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron’s staff. We know what happened to the Tent. We don’t know what happened to the staff or the Ark.”

  “Aye, and there’s the rub,” McDonough cut in. “For a long time, I wondered why there were so many recurring images of a budding shepherd’s staff in all the messages and clues left behind by Jeremiah on the mezuzah, in the grotto, and in his tomb. The purpose or meanings of the other symbols—the Tau symbol, and the scorpion and the others—have all fallen into place. But why the shepherd’s staff? What did Aaron’s budding staff have to do with finding the hidden Temple, or uncovering the burial place of the Tent of Meeting?”

  “Which is where we come in,” said Rizzo.

  “So where … I’m sorry,” said Bohannon, “but I still don’t see how the codex or Aaron’s staff is involved in the search for the hidden Temple, or the Tent of Meeting.”

  Rizzo grabbed a sandwich off the plate on the table and pulled a red-handled Swiss Army knife out of his back pocket. After carefully cutting the sandwich in quarters, he turned to face Bohannon, wiping down the blade with a napkin.

  “Before Doc was killed,” he said, “he was in his room, talking with the old man we met in the library of St. Antony’s Monastery. When I gave up and went to bed, they were going through an old book. The two guys from the Temple Guard who rescued me grabbed that book and brought it with them. It was an incomplete version of the codex. This Aleppo Codex thing is what got Doc killed.