The Sacred Cipher Read online

  “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.”

  3

  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 k
nown 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.

  “There . . . there,” said Joe excitedly. “That’s a match, right? That’s a match, Sammy?”

  Rodriguez made room for Rizzo to roll closer to the two pieces of paper. Rizzo traced the lines and curves of one symbol with the tip of his forefinger while transmitting that touch through his eyes to the symbol on the other page. Several times, he repeated the process, a ritual of recognition that didn’t seem to fully satisfy the diminutive scholar. “It’s close—it’s real close, but there’s something else going on here. It’s not an exact match, and it should be.

  “But there’s one good thing,” Rizzo said, spinning around toward them. “I know what it is. And I know where it came from.”

  4

  Sammy Rizzo plugged in an electric kettle that rested on top of a small filing cabinet. “I’ve only got tea, so that’s what you get.” Rizzo made a fast intercom connection to someone elsewhere in the library, while he directed Bohannon and Rodriguez to take seats around a small, meeting table in the corner of his office.

  “I’ll give you guys a short history lesson while we’re waiting for that water to boil,” said Rizzo, as he joined them at the table. “First, how did this sheet of paper come about? I mean, you don’t have to tell me your secrets, no offense, but how did you two come to be in possession of whatever it is that you copied these symbols from? Come on, Joe, this is not your line of business.”

  Rodriguez looked at Rizzo with a scowl on his face. He knew Rizzo would help them regardless, with or without more information. But he also felt his colleague deserved some kind of explanation.

  “Sam,” Rodriguez said solemnly, leaning across the table to emphasize his words, “obviously, we’ve discovered something we think may be significant. Tom has unexpectedly found a number of antiquities. Among them was a document that contained this writing. We couldn’t even identify the language, let alone decipher what it meant. So we came to you for help, hoping you might be able to identify what we’re looking at.”

  Rizzo rocked back and forth in his chair. He took off his glasses and began to rapidly clean the lenses with the bottom of his bowling league shirt. “As long as this isn’t a forgery or a joke of some kind, then I can tell you that these symbols come from a very old document, perhaps two thousand years old. The document is likely parchment rolled up as a scroll and very well preserved. Parchment is made of animal skin, most likely sheepskin. If it was kept in a moist or humid environment or in one with dramatic climate changes, the skin would have shrunk and expanded hundreds of times, destroying it and anything written on it. Parchment in the desert, however, seems to last forever. We have scrolls from twenty-five hundred years ago that are still legible and in good shape because they were kept in a desert area with little humidity.

  “How’s that so far?” Rizzo said, a twinkle in his eye as he perched the glasses on the crest of his nose. “A regular Sherlock Holmes, eh?”

  “I knew you were the right guy,” said Rodriguez. “You are pretty much right on the money. The letters, the ink, is faded a bit, and some of the letters may have separated or cracked. But the scroll itself is in pretty good shape. So what else have you been able to figure out?”

  “I’ve figured out that I’d like to see this scroll for myself,” he said bluntly.

  Rodriguez and Bohannon looked at each other with questioning glances. How far did they want to take this with Rizzo?

  “Sam, if I were you, I’d want to see this scroll, too. I understand that,” said Rodriguez. “And I know you could help us try and figure this thing out. But one of the reasons we’re being as careful as we are is that in the package with this scroll was a letter, a letter warning about the danger of this document, that people would kill for it. Whether that’s still true today, who knows? I mean it sounds like a cheap adventure novel, but it’s possible this could get dangerous. I just want you to understand what you may be getting into. Tom and I, we’re just curious enough, and just crazy enough, to want to find out. So what do you think it is?”

  Sammy Rizzo’s eyes sparkled. “It’s not what I think it is; it’s what I know it is.”

  The whistling kettle broke into Sammy’s thoughts.

  “Hey, Tom, would you mind getting
that?” Sammy nodded at the filing cabinet. “There should be some sugar up there, too.”

  Rizzo wrestled with conflicting emotions. Part of him felt the elation of a prospector with a shiny nugget in his hand. Another part of him was heavy with the knowledge that the nugget was fool’s gold. He waited while Bohannon busied himself with the mugs, then pressed on, aware that his information would soon crush the excitement in the room.

  “I’m sure you’ve both heard of the Rosetta Stone. We all learned about it in school,” he began. “But do you know why the Rosetta Stone was such an important find?”

  “Sure,” said Rodriguez as they stirred and blew on their steaming mugs. “It gave us the ability to understand Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

  “That’s right,” said Sammy, “but it wasn’t that simple. From the time the Greeks discovered the first hieroglyphic writing in Egypt about three hundred years before Christ, deciphering those hieroglyphic images had been an impossibility. Plenty of theories were offered, but none of the theories held up under scrutiny. Hieroglyphs were an unknown and lost language, and historians despaired of ever understanding their meaning.

  “The Rosetta Stone is an ancient stele, or stone tablet, inscribed with the same message in three languages . . . two Egyptian languages and classical Greek. The stone was created in 196 B.C. It’s a decree from Ptolemy V, the fifth ruler of the Greek’s Ptolemaic Dynasty that ruled Egypt for over three hundred years. The decree repealed certain taxes and instructed that statues should be erected in temples. Making decrees and carving the decrees on stones was common for the Ptolemys,” said Rizzo, as he warmed to the task. “They would make several copies and then display the stones in key locations all over Egypt in order to maintain support for the dynasty. As Greeks, it was critical to the Ptolemaic rulers that all people could understand the decrees. So the stones were inscribed in several languages to be read, not only by the local people, but also by visiting priests and government officials.”