by Brad Ricca
Mr. Parker listened thoughtfully. “The rabbi’s involvement is obvious,” he said, “though we cannot legally prove it. As far as Mr. Hoppenrath, I’m afraid your zeal has misled you. He showed me the interpretation he received the other day from the rabbi in the contents of the pottery writing. He mentioned it, laughing actually, that you had made some reference to him trying to steal a report.”
Juvelius tried to breathe.
“I think that Hoppenrath is completely clean on this,” said Mr. Parker.
Juvelius decided to spend the rest of the day in his hotel room tending to the sick Uotila. He was going to board the train tomorrow to go home. He sent his goodbyes to the English, and after a pause, to Hoppenrath as well. Juvelius was then surprised when Hoppenrath appeared in the early evening at his door. He was dressed in a new riding suit.
Hoppenrath had come to accept Juvelius’s earlier explanation that he had needed Uotila’s help to finish his writing in time and that there were no hard feelings. But he had more to say.
“My work has been of greater benefit to the expedition than anyone,” said Hoppenrath, close to his face and with spittle on his mustache. “The rest? I arranged the purchase of the land! Excavating is always when difficulties have been overcome, usually from my skill. I insist on being involved in all financial aspects of the company interests!”
“I think Mr. Parker has valued your work,” said Juvelius. “But I can’t do anything about those matters. You should ask him to bring your case to London to the board of the Syndicate.”
“Now you don’t know what you’re talking about!” snarled Hoppenrath. “For me, all doors are open! What would stop me from going for a week, for example, to the Rothschilds? Do you think they would not be interested?” Juvelius knew that the French banker, the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, was not only greatly interested in Jewish interests in Palestine but had the nearly infinite resources with which to accomplish his goals. Were he to find out about their digging, the results could be catastrophic.
Juvelius said calmly, “That kind of speech has an ill name in every language. I still suggest that you turn to Mr. Parker, but I would not advise you to use the same language with him, at least in the presence of foreign men.”
Hoppenrath left in a rage, grabbing his whip from his riding boot as he stormed out.
Uotila, who had been lying silently on the bed the whole time, finally spoke up.
“At last,” he said in a thoughtful manner, perhaps a little dreamily because of the medicine, “I understand Hoppenrath’s calculations, which I had always missed. I understand that he had intended from the beginning to betray us, but I did not know that his purpose was to do so for another party. I always thought it was about him. That’s why he needed to collect all the information about us. And he used his wife, too!
“Hoppenrath went to the rabbi—who was truly interested in what we’re doing—and promised to get him a copy of the report, provided he received a letter of introduction to Rothschild. If anyone could shut us down and find the Ark, it would surely be him. So even though Hoppenrath could not produce the report, he still got the rabbi to talk, at least a little. But I think he has that letter now, even if he bought it in pieces from explanations. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so cocky and rude.”
Uotila sighed and closed his eyes again. Juvelius regarded him silently. His friend was still in pain, and new bruises had been appearing by the hour. But there was no anger or thoughts of revenge from Uotila, only the awakening of understanding.
“You’re right,” Juvelius admitted. “We have been from day one the victim of unhelpful mistakes. But just my explanations won’t be enough. Our enemies will still need the actual cipher. Without that, it will probably be difficult for them to do us harm.
“Maybe I should have gone to the Jews first,” said Juvelius. “Remember what I said to you two years ago: if the Ark is a purely scientific question, the Jews would be the best to excavate it. But … in the hands of the Jews, the whole scientific material that might be obtained in the crevices of the mountain would remain their own private secret, unlike what Western research does in sharing such information.
“What is the significance of such a thing that could so cleanse our Western culture’s misconceptions if it were hid? It would of course be useless. But I am not second-guessing myself. Neither of us have undertaken this to get rich.”
Early the next morning, Juvelius left the bed of his sad friend, from whom he had enjoyed an unexpected amount of help these past months, and traveled by train to Jaffa and then farther on to home.
Twenty-One
Charles Warren
JERUSALEM, FEBRUARY 1868
FORTY-ONE YEARS EARLIER
Charles Warren was climbing down an eighty-foot-long shaft on a twisting rope ladder that looked as if it was going to snap to twigs in seconds. He was sweating profusely but didn’t dare try to grab his handkerchief, so he kept going. He reached one of the wooden beams and stopped against it for a moment. He did not look down.
He and Sergeant Birtles had bombed these shafts—at impossible depths—only twenty feet from the Haram wall. After his last trip, when they had walked through the tunnel at the Virgin’s Fountain, Warren had somehow secured a permit to dig anywhere he wished, provided he avoided the specific religious sites, of course. So instead of digging at the Dome of the Rock, which was absolutely forbidden by the Arabs, Warren had decided to dig alongside it. Many people were not happy.
When such persons came to complain, Warren would wave his official order around and bluff his way out of arguments, but he knew his days were numbered, which is why they were being so—reckless wasn’t quite the word, perhaps forward-thinking—with their digging. Their shafts were so deep that none of the locals would even work for them anymore. Warren saw their point: there had been a few exceedingly close calls with cave-ins, but they were still alive; they were still at it. Birtles was pacing up top, on the lookout for prying eyes.
Warren plunked himself down on the ground and coughed up a mouthful of dust. He blew his nose and looked around. He was in the dry gallery at the southeast corner of the Haram that pushed up to about six feet away from the angle of the Temple wall. His goal, though he did not say it, was to find a way to … examine … the underneath of the Dome of the Rock from the side. He crouched and made his way up the passage.
When he reached the wall, he found stones exactly like those at the Wailing Wall, which was surprising at that level below the surface. As he brushed and swept away some of the dirt, Warren saw something else he was not expecting.
Words. Or letters? No. Something else. The figures looked Phoenician, though he did not know how to read it, the first language of words.
Painted in red on one of the big stones in front of him were three characters. They looked like the letters O, Y, and Q though he knew that wasn’t possible. Not this deep in the ground. Warren could only guess what they were. Were they a sign? A warning? It was well known that Phoenician masons had designed and built Solomon’s Temple. Were these marks meant to show where to place the stones? He did not know. Warren took a photograph, but when he had it developed, all he could see was the flame of his candle, which had wandered into the field of view.
Warren consulted an expert in the city named Dr. Julius Henry Petermann, a German. He agreed that they were Phoenician in origin, but did not know what they meant, only that they were a “seal” of some kind. Of what, he did not know. Another expert, Mr. Deutsch, agreed that they were masons’ marks to help in the construction of the structure.
The writing greatly puzzled Warren, who did not like being puzzled. They had previously found some Phoenician writing at the south wall, near the underground opening by which the ducts made their exit from the Temple, carrying the refuse from the altar to the valley below. There, Warren had found pottery remains. Some had the sign of the king on them—El Melek—in the Phoenician or Hebrew character.
Twenty-Two
Monty Parker
JERUSALEM, 1909
Monty walked up the stairs of the Virgin’s Fountain and felt the wind whip across his shirt. The afternoon skies were dark, almost green, and the air was heavy. He stopped and looked out over the ridge. Any day now—or really any moment—the rain would come. But not just any afternoon shower, this would be the storm that would begin, end, and then be followed by three days of soft rain. This would repeat, with some clear weeks here and there, until February, when the rainy season would really be uncorked and Palestine would be cool and wet for months. Only in May would the sheets of water taper off, then end, giving room to the sun to parch the ground in July and August, before starting all over again. Every guide and expert had told them this. The Jews even had a name for the first drops: yoreh.
Rain was important, especially since they were excavating a tunnel once used to transport water. In the underground mud, rain was not something they could work around. Monty walked over to a tent they had set up outside. They all agreed that they would have to leave once the rains began in earnest. They would close the works and return for England. They would return as soon as they could, after the wet Jerusalem winter.
For only three months’ work, they had accomplished quite a bit: not only clearing the stairs and exploring the Dragon Shaft but also starting work on Hezekiah’s Tunnel. They had found many new passages and some artifacts, including Jewish flat lamps and sling balls made of metal. They had not found any trace of radium. To their disappointment, they had found nothing in the main tunnel yet. Any hope of a secret channel up to the Temple or a walled-up hiding place had been dashed by every foot of debris removed.
They had not found the Ark yet. Monty was not looking forward to going back to Saltram empty-handed.
Monty had his papers with him, in his folder. He spilled them onto the table, which was already covered with maps and some books. As always, there was the cipher again, almost taunting him. Monty pinched his nose and closed his eyes. Lately, the cipher had become somewhat infuriating. So many of the places they were digging appeared in its pages—the Fountain, the Pool of Siloam, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and Warren’s Shaft—but they were almost static; they were destinations without direction. The cipher was so vague that they had to rely on Juvelius’s interpretations, which were often just as murky. Juvelius said that abstraction was unavoidable; not only had the text been corrupted over thousands of years, but it was actively trying to throw them off the trail. This was not making things easier, especially with thunder at their doorstep.
Monty opened the pages and read into the layers of the cipher again. The words themselves plunged all the way down from English, to Swedish, to Hebrew, all the way to the apocryphal books etched out on ancient papyrus. And all the old voices and whispers before that. Juvelius claimed to be able to see the differences in these variations and account for them all, balancing them like a parcel of long metal rods clanging against each other as they moved. Monty was not sure how such a thing was possible. Juvelius was going far below the crust of things. Either he would find, as Juvelius claimed, the purest form of the Scripture in the form of the Ark itself, or it would be, in the cipher’s own words, what was prophesized in Ezekiel:
And the entrance crooked fasten up /
Its hole (throat?) fortified with curse / the heap of stones.
Juvelius had been adamant since the beginning that there were dangerous traps awaiting those who sought the Ark. The cipher warned “the infamous deed! Oh! / The lightning of wrath (for) the shamelessness to commit violation / And sudden misfortune strikes the destroyer!” But aside from some precarious rocks here and there, they had not had even a single accident.
The more they explored the main tunnel, and the less they found, Monty began thinking of the mysterious third way to the Ark that Juvelius had mentioned when they first came to Jerusalem. In the cipher, this was represented next to a crude drawing, presumably drawn by Juvelius, of a hand pointed east. Some of his sketches, especially the more geometric ones, seemed important. The passage that followed was one of special mystery:
How? The law / and a special? / Woe, / earthly asylums
Close to Molok / hundred steps? / to the cave / behold
The shame of the law / and “something” in connections!
(for) mark / the water / there in front of
As / the dam / see / the innermost (of the) / swells
Sinks / moves violently its water /-(so) “shivering?” / seek
The opening
Reach (?) / The staircase in the hole /—Not / Babel
(dishonour them) / nevertheless! / (No!)
It was followed by some of Juvelius’s own annotations:
A “special” = Molok!
The shame of the law = Molok
Something = the ark
This passage was also peculiar, claimed Juvelius, because it was protected by a “safety lock”:
Here Ezekiel has decided to give extremely dangerous information. It is in question the entrance from the valley-side an entrance which stood open for anyone. Ezekiel protects it [by] commencing his cipher series not from the letter 7 but allows this letter to contribute the seventh letter in the cipher series 1,2,3,4,5, with the seventh initial letter has been ticked off and taken into account as 7 in the series the safety lock.
Behold the confusion!
Monty at least understood those last three words, if not what came before. The cipher had become almost nonsensical. Who was Molok? Monty knew he had heard that name before. He assumed he might be some sort of pagan idol, like Baal or the golden calf. The cipher had more to say on the subject:
Molok. Compare in connection with this that in several traditions of the middle ages, the hiding place of the ark is taken in connection with Molok. Molok enters also of course in the mystery of the freemasons at the symbolical searching for the Ark and the law (Melander) Jerusalem’s hidden temple treasures.
Monty wondered at these words and what they had to do with the mysterious third way.
He needed some air.
Monty stepped out of the tent and looked around. There were workers about, some of the men, the usual mess. Hoppenrath was in the city; even Uotila was somewhere else. Monty saw Juvelius walking up the same stairs he had just left. Monty motioned him over. Juvelius looked around. Not even Macasdar was around. Monty waved to him again.
Juvelius entered the tent, where it was just Monty and he under its very uncertain roof, which had waves rippling across it because of the wind. They had tried communicating many times to varied outcomes, many of them close to imaginary. But it was not impossible. Juvelius knew English and could read, even write. There were barriers and layers, but Monty would have to try to understand the man directly.
“What’s this?” said Monty pointing to the word on the cipher. Juvelius looked down, then looked back up quickly.
“Molech” was how he pronounced it. “M’lek.” He spoke something in Swedish, then stopped.
“King,” said Juvelius. “M’lek. King.”
Juvelius saw Monty’s Bible on the table and picked it up. He opened and looked at it, with a moment of puzzlement, almost as if his eyes were adjusting to the light. He went through the pages quickly, went back, then forward, then stopped. He pointed to a verse; it was Leviticus 18:21:
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Was Monty wrong? Had Molok been some sort of local warlord? It was one of those words that you recognized and realized it was always there, sitting quietly under the skin of things.
Juvelius went to his bag and took out a book, bound in cracked brown leather. The scholar was never without his books. He went through the pages, much more confidently this time, before laying it open on the table.
There was an illustration, or perhaps a woodcut of a great creature—not a king at all, or at least not a human one. It was colossal in height, with the head of a bull, horns, and soft animal eye
s. It stood from the waist up on a hilly countryside, holding out two great outstretched hands. There were open rectangles in its chest. Billows of smoke raised from below.
“Molok,” said Juvelius. “Idol.”
It was like Baal then, Monty nodded. It was one of the many pagan idols that the Israelites stamped out.
“No,” said Juvelius. He knew that Monty was missing his point. He began pointing to the people beneath the beast, who were worshipping it.
“Canaanites. Also, King.”
They were the nation of tribal people that had lived in Palestine before the Israelites conquered them. Monty knew that the Bible described them as large, wicked, and strong. They were descended of the House of Noah; specifically, his grandson Canaan, who was a son of Ham. Monty deduced that this Molok was a god they worshipped and sacrificed their oxen to for good harvests, fertility, and protection.
“Where?” asked Monty. Juvelius moved the book to the side and pulled the map into view. He pointed to a small valley right next to them. Hinnom.
The book with the picture had slid closer to Monty. He studied it more closely.
“What are the boxes for?” asked Monty, pointing to the openings in the idol’s chest. He asked because they looked to be exactly the size of the Ark. Is this why Molok was mentioned in the cipher? He asked Juvelius again.
“No, no, no,” said Juvelius, turning pale. He grabbed Monty’s Bible again and found another passage, this time in 2 Kings:
And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.
Juvelius pointed to the boxes again, and the twists of smoke rising around them.
“For children,” he said. “For children.”
PART THREE
THE KING IN COPPER