For decades, Iran’s moderate majority had been ruled by the ruthlessness of a minority. In the months that followed, Arash gradually implemented changes which the people had desperately wanted. When the elections rolled around in March, Arash was elected president by a landslide in one of the first fair elections in Iran since Mohammad Mosaddegh. With the momentum of his victory, Arash had a new constitution drawn up based on democratic principles. Israel was the first nation to publicly announce diplomatic and trade ties with the new democratic Iran. Thereafter, most of the Western world followed suit.
* * *
Darius watched the events in Iran unfold with satisfaction. Arash had carried out the coup perfectly. Iran was now ruled by a son of Hystaspes. If things continued according to plan, in the near future the rest of the world would no longer be under the control of the Order. Darius smiled in anticipation.
Sitting at his desk high atop the Dubai Tower, Darius turned his attention to File 13. He had been too busy the past several weeks to pursue the secret, and he had missed his ritual. Opening the file, he read through several names on the list, smiling momentarily as he passed the name of Isaac Newton. Moving on, Darius selected William Colgate. Colgate had a fascinating history, but more importantly, he’d left behind a symbol. The symbol interested Darius more than the man.
William Colgate was born January 25, 1783. His parents immigrated to America from England in 1798 and settled in Hartford. Colgate became an apprentice soap maker at a young age. After his apprenticeship, he started his own business. His soap company, William Colgate & Company, soon became an American household name. Today it was known as Colgate-Palmolive.
In 1808, William Colgate was baptized and became a member of the First Baptist Church of New York. Colgate was active in the American Bible Society and later helped found the American and Foreign Bible Society. It was reported that in 1817, the Baptist Education Society was founded by William Colgate, one of thirteen men with thirteen dollars, thirteen prayers and thirteen articles. In 1823, the Baptist Theological Seminary and the Baptist Education Society incorporated and changed their name to the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. William Colgate was one of the trustees. In 1846, the school’s name was changed to Madison University; then in 1890, its name changed again to Colgate University in recognition of the contribution of the Colgate family.
Colgate University was located at 13 Oak Street in Hamilton, New York. Its zip code was 13346 (3 + 4 + 6 = 13). Its senior honor society, Konosioni, was made up of thirteen men and thirteen women. All Colgate alumni were asked to wear Colgate apparel on each Friday the thirteenth.
Darius could not understand why a devout fundamental Baptist Christian was interested in the symbolism of the number thirteen. There was no evidence to suggest that Colgate was part of any organization related to Templar Masonry. In fact, the Baptists were at the forefront of the anti-Masonic movement of the early 1800s. So why then did a Christian fundamentalist have an interest in the number thirteen?
The mystery grew more intriguing the more closely Darius looked. It wasn’t until three years after he first compiled the information on Colgate that Darius learned of the symbol.
In 2000, an amateur historian named Alan Solomon received a call from a friend. Alan’s friend Dave was fighting the demolition of a property at 211 Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan. Rockrose Development Corp., founded by three Iranian brothers in 1970, wanted to break Dave’s lease and tear down the building to make way for a new development. Dave hoped he could get a historic designation for the building, so he had called his friend. Alan Solomon became engrossed with his research into the history of 211 Pearl Street but it was the esoteric brick symbol on the building which most intrigued him. Dave and Alan lost the fight to preserve the building but due to Solomon’s efforts, the brickwork symbol was preserved.
It turned out that the building on 211 Pearl Street was one of William Colgate’s most valued properties. Of the seventeen properties in his will, 211 Pearl Street was willed to his children equally with a stipulation that it could not be sold for fifteen years. The symbolic brickwork on the building had baffled investigators for the past ten years. They had even started calling it the “American Da Vinci Code”. No one seemed to be able to come up with a definitive explanation as to its meaning. Darius had tried to figure out the puzzle himself but so far had been unable to solve it. He had counted and numbered the bricks in every way he could think of. The only thing he had noticed was the number thirteen was prominent in the design. This combined with Colgate’s history and his involvement in the founding of Colgate University told Darius there was something here, but what? Darius couldn’t say why, but he felt that this symbolic brickwork might be a clue to the Order’s secret. But why was it hidden on the building of a fundamentalist Christian?
Darius took one last look at the picture of the symbol and then closed the file. While everything was going according to plan with his invention, he was admittedly frustrated with the slow pace of his search for the secret. But he was getting closer, of that he was sure. He wasn’t about to give up now.
Chapter 35
Capernaum, Israel
Rachael Neumann was busy making preparations for the Capernaum dig. Over the winter months she had gradually increased her exercise routine until she regained the strength in her leg. Her one great concern over the past several weeks was that she would be kicked off the archeology team because she was not able to handle her responsibilities. She received no special treatment because of her father. She was too proud and her father too honest. She had earned her position on the archeology team by her dedication, hard work, and persistence.
Her father had placed Efran Finkelstein in charge of this dig, and while he was a capable administrator, she did not particularly like him. He always seemed to be waiting for something. He did just enough to get by without making any waves as he climbed the system’s ladder of success. Efran was a person who put his finger to the air to see which way the wind was blowing before he would make a decision. He was pushed to the top, not because he was the best choice, but because he made the fewest enemies along the way.
Most of all, she didn’t like Efran because her intuition told her he was a man who capitalized on the efforts of others. She was a champion of men like her father, men rough around the edges, strong and straightforward, men of honor, men who spoke little but did much. Efran was a weak, Machiavellian schemer with great flattering words and little deeds. They had come to an unspoken truce of sorts. Not willing to cause her father any undue grief, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes open. Efran, wary of the director’s daughter, watched and waited.
* * *
Distracted, the Baker descended the wooden stairs to the basement under his bakery. Crossing the floor, he entered the secret room behind the shelf and turned on the battery charger. His sister had refused to move the wedding, so he had to leave tonight. What could he do? She was his only sister, and their father was dead. He truly loved her, but she could be obstinate sometimes.
He would just have to risk leaving the magnet on. The new batch of messages was due tonight. The crude electromagnet was in a safe place, it had never given him any problems, and . . . what was he worrying about anyway? Nothing was going to happen. He would be back in five days, and they would not know he had been gone.
Turning off the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, the Baker closed the door to the secret room. Climbing the stairs out of the basement, he locked the door behind him. He placed a sign in the window, locked the front door, and left for his sister’s wedding in Jordan.
* * *
The following evening, half a mile away and a hundred feet higher in elevation, Miriam Rosenfeld lay on the couch talking to her mother on the phone. The frustrated young mother had finally solved her mouse problem. The steel wool had worked: it had taken only one box, just like her friend had said. The remaining boxes Miriam had placed in the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom.
He knew he was not supposed to be in the bathroom, but he could not help himself. On this day he found the bathroom cabinet door open slightly. With his chubby fingers, he opened it further and found all sorts of interesting and unusual things to explore.
After a few minutes, Jesse found the steel wool. Pulling it out from its little packages like he had seen his mother do, his one-and-a-half-year-old brain had the inspired idea to see what would happen if he put the steel wool in the toilet and pulled on the handle.
For the next thirty minutes, to his unmitigated rapture, little Jesse pulled steel wool out of its packages and watched with fascination as it disappeared down the toilet every time he flushed. By some miracle he never threw so many in that they stopped up the toilet. Finally, as he was in the act of tossing the last steel wool ball into the toilet, his mother found him in the midst of the open and empty packaging strewn all over the bathroom floor.
Jesse looked up into his mother’s face with such innocent joy that her scolding look melted into an expression of motherly love, and she just shook her head and softly laughed. There was nothing she could do about it now anyway. If the toilet got stopped up, so be it—she would just call the plumber. Picking up the torn and scattered pieces of packaging, she gently told Jesse that he was never to throw anything down the toilet again. Closing the cabinet door, she pulled on it to make sure the safety lock had engaged; then, holding little Jesse’s hand, she closed the bathroom door behind them.
Unbeknownst to Miriam and Jesse, those little steel wool balls were on a journey which would ultimately save the lives of millions of people.
Chapter 36
After leaving the bottom of the toilet, each rough steel wool ball made its way through a lateral three-inch sewer pipe to the apartment building’s common drain stack. There, each ball turned straight down into the vertical drain piping which fell thirty feet into the basement of the apartment. Turning toward the street, the little balls of wool made their way out into one of Tel Aviv’s main sewer lines.
Since it was six in the evening, the sewer lines were being used all over this section of town. The sewage level in the pipe was at its normal full flow. As the balls picked up speed in the city’s main sewer line, they began to roll and turn like little snowballs accumulating debris as they made the half-mile journey under the busy streets of Tel Aviv. When each little metallic sewer snowball reached the Baker’s magnetic snare, it was grabbed by an unseen force and held to the inside of the sewer pipe.
By the time the final steel wool ball had reached the magnetic net, the city sewer main for that section of Tel Aviv was already ninety-nine-percent blocked. With that final little ball, the sewer main stopped flowing completely.
Within five minutes, every basement upstream of the bakery which did not have a backwater valve began to fill with raw sewage. When the sewage levels in the basements reached ground level, the manholes in the street began to pour forth their filth. Fifteen minutes later, the city’s public works department was being inundated with its own flood of phone calls.
On call that night were Michael Goldburg and Levi Wollenberg. Michael had been with the city’s public works department for five years after retiring from the Israeli Army, where he flew unmanned aerial vehicles. Jokingly, Michael told people he no longer flew UAVs, but now he drove USVs for a living. USVs, Michael explained to whoever asked, were unmanned sewer vehicles.
Levi was the son of a successful plumbing contractor in Tel Aviv. He and his father did not get along, so Levi worked as a sanitation engineer for the city. While the title sounded important, when people asked what he did, Levi just said somewhat crudely that he was a “turd wrestler.” Levi drove and operated one of the city’s massive ten-wheeled hydro-jet rooter trucks. Basically, he operated one of the largest roto-rooters known to man.
After receiving the emergency calls that night, Michael climbed into the city’s newest sewer-inspection truck. In his Camel hydro-jet rooter truck, Levi followed. A couple of blocks away they knew they were getting close because they could see the sewage running down the street. There hadn’t been a total main line stoppage in several months, and none during the sewer “rush hour,” as they called it.
The first manhole they found overflowing with sewage was just upstream of the Markouk Bakery. Pulling their trucks downstream to the next manhole, they set out their traffic-control cones and popped the manhole to take a look.
“Not much water running through this one, Levi,” Michael said matter-of-factly. He pointed to the manhole up the street five hundred feet and said, “Looks like the stoppage is somewhere between here and there.”
“You want to jet it first or take a look?”
“Let’s take a look,” Michael said. “The damage is already done up there, and another half-hour won’t make much difference. Besides, we haven’t had a full-blown stoppage like this in a long time, and I’d like to see what’s causing it before you blow it all to kingdom come with that truck of yours.”
“You’re the boss,” Levi replied. Walking over to his jetter truck, he turned it off. Michael backed his vehicle right up to the edge of the sewer manhole. Opening the back doors, he removed Rover the Sewer Dog, as he jokingly called him, from his compartment. Rover was the latest technology in commercial robotic sewer-inspection cameras. Rover had a state-of-the-art color camera which could be turned three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Rover also had a robotic arm which could be fitted with several different tools.
Fitting Rover with the retrieval arm, Michael gently lowered him by his Kevlar fiber-optic cable twenty feet down into the dark, damp, and stinky sewer system of Tel Aviv. Michael climbed back into his truck and sat down in his command chair. Levi stood at the edge of the manhole with elbow-length rubber gloves, guiding Rover’s cable down into the hole.
Michael flipped several switches on the console above the small desk in the back of the truck. As Rover powered up, a clear picture of the sewer main emerged. Grabbing the joystick on the desk, Michael pushed it forward, and Rover’s six specially designed wheels began to turn, dragging the Kevlar fiber-optic cable up the sewer main toward the stoppage. Slowly, Levi fed the cable into the manhole as Michael drove the USV up the pipe. This section of the city’s sewer line was relatively new, so Michael’s monitor showed plastic piping. They had gone over three hundred feet up the pipe, and so far everything looked great. Levi, standing outside, heard Michael whistle as he said, “Man would you look at that! Never seen a cockroach that big before.”
Levi laughed under his breath and then said out loud, “Has the cockroach cowboy found himself another monster?”
Michael’s voice responded from the truck, “Levi, you’ve got to see this thing. It must be four inches long. I think even Rover is scared of him.”
They continued on for another fifty feet before Levi heard Michael say, “It’s coming into view now. Wow, that is blocked solid.” As Rover approached to within one foot of the obstruction, Michael noticed that Rover was sliding up the pipe—moving up toward the obstruction on his own. For a moment, interference made the camera picture fuzz.
“Hold that cable, Levi!” Michael shouted from the truck. “Something weird is going on here.” Michael pulled back on the joystick and turned the camera slightly for a better angle, backing Rover up a foot or so. Then he zoomed in on the obstruction. It appeared slightly reddish and gray. Zooming in still more, he saw that it was steel wool covered in sewer debris.
“We’ve got a bunch of steel wool down here. It seems to be sticking directly to the bare walls of the pipe. I don’t see anything for it to hang u
p on, though.” Michael thought for a moment. “Levi, I am going to drive it in close again—keep some tension on the cable, will you?”
“Will do, Michael.”
Michael drove forward again slowly. As he approached the obstruction, he noticed the interference again on the monitor. When he got within one foot, Rover began to slide forward. “Levi, only let it go six more inches.” Rover started to shake as if some invisible hand was pulling on him in different directions. Michael called out, “Okay, Levi, let’s back him up.”
As Michael backed Rover up several feet, he noticed several small, dull gray, metallic-looking objects lying on the bottom of the pipe. Turning the camera down for a closer look, he spotted the folded edges on one of the gray objects. Michael switched on Rover’s robotic arm and positioned it over the object. Reaching down, Rover retrieved the object and placed it in a small retrieval basket. Michael repeated this for the other three objects.
“Let’s pull it out, Levi.”
Levi guided the cable as Michael drove Rover back down the sewer line. When Rover had reached the bottom of the manhole, Levi gently lifted him out and onto the pavement beside the manhole. Levi sprayed Rover down with the truck’s water, and Michael collected the small gray objects from Rover’s basket.
The 13th Enumeration Page 16