“What?”
“The bottom of the box,” Poppodopolous repeated. “Has anyone ever looked at the bottom of the box? Or inside it, to see what’s inside? Rabbi, do you think your son and the Rabbinate took the time to closely inspect the box?”
Herzog shook his head, the reminder of his dead son clearly adding weight to the elderly man’s shoulders. “Who is to know? Open it, they did. Inspect it? Did they have time? Those last minutes, I know not what they were like. I wish not to know.”
The monk took three steps, stood beside Herzog’s chair, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Forgive me, Mordechai, that was insensitive of me.”
The old man shook his head again. “No … but you are right. If there is kabbalah on the lid of the box, is there anything else on the rest of the box? Anything that could give us a better understanding of its purpose?”
The other four people in the room turned at once to look in Mullaney’s direction. He knew it was coming. There was only one way to find out what was on the rest of the box. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. And remembered the feel of the angel’s hands on his shoulder and his face. He remembered the words that were spoken over him. And he remembered the light that came with the words … the clarity of understanding … the new depth of perception beyond the surface into a new realm, one that he now shared with the angel Bayard. And he felt a peace that went beyond his fragile emotions. And he felt duty.
Are you really going to touch it? What if …
38
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 3:17 p.m.
Mullaney stood over the reinforced diplomatic pouch, unlocked the hasp, and opened the bag. Inside was the blast container containing the Gaon’s box. No one had come close to touching the box since the IDF bomb squad had maneuvered the box into this blast container in the old section of Jerusalem three days ago, just after Rabbi Chaim Yavod died a gruesome death.
The blast container looked like a stainless steel egg, about a foot long and nine or ten inches high … relatively small, for small devices, as opposed to total containment systems that were often carted around on the backs of trucks. It was oval shaped, and one-third of its length was a hinged blast cover. When the cover was closed, completing the egg, a steel hasp pulled the cover tight to the rest of the container. There was a short, L-shaped steel bar on the front of the cover, the short side an integrated part of the blast cover. When the handle was pulled clockwise, it triggered a locking mechanism that clamped hooks over steel bars around the entire circumference of the blast cover.
Mullaney pulled up on the bar in the center of the door, releasing the locking mechanism, and pulled the door aside, freeing the cover from the rest of the container. Inside was a steel shelf on rollers. He pulled out the shelf. On it, wrapped within a steel-mesh cocoon, was the Gaon’s lethal bronze box and the shattered pieces of the wooden box that once enclosed it.
Where’s Bayard when I need him? Is this going to work? Am I really safe?
There’s only one way to find out.
Closing his eyes, Mullaney breathed deep. Lord … please be with me.
Whispering the Aaronic blessing to himself, over and over, with the guarded precision of a glass blower, Mullaney lowered his hands into the blast container, his fingers spread around the steel mesh shroud surrounding the metal box. Now or never.
He touched the steel mesh. Then his fingers wrapped around the box itself.
He waited.
And his heart leaped with terror. Something … was happening. He could feel it.
Mullaney’s eyes flew wide open, his mind searching every cell in his body, searching for the harbinger of pain and death.
Something was rising in him.
Oh … Abby … I’m so sorr …
Wait … not death!
No. Life.
Or more precisely, beyond life.
His eyes wide open, he no longer needed to see. He could see!
Mullaney’s mind was exploring a reality he had never experienced before while his emotions were as calm as a day without breeze. He knew the box. He experienced its purpose. Then the sounds of mortal combat rushed through his ears.
The crash of metal reverberated, not in his hearing but in every cell of his body. The crash was a thousandfold … deep and wide and high. Darkness was on one side. Blinding, life-giving light was on the other. Thousands upon thousands of footsteps moved forward in a clatter of armor and the calls of battle. And the host of heaven was on the march.
The warfare was spiritual. But it was real. Without fully understanding how or why, Mullaney knew he was seeing a glimpse of a spiritual battle going on in the heavenlies. And he was involved. No! He was the reason. An angel army was engaged with the hounds of hell. And all to protect him. The battle still raged in his hearing, but he closed his fingers around the box and lifted it clear of the blast container. Treating it with the reverence of a jeweled crown, Mullaney laid the box on top of the desk. And took his hands away.
Immediately, silence flooded his brain.
Mullaney pulled his eyes away from the box. Herzog, Poppodopolous, Hughes, and Parker were all looking at him as if they were waiting for his head to explode and praying that it wouldn’t. His eyes found Parker’s.
“You were right,” he said. “That Scripture you read to me about us being a part of the spiritual war raging in heaven? You were right. The battle is going on right now. I could hear it.”
Parker opened her mouth. But no words came out.
Mullaney turned away, back to the desk. “I’m going to open the box now.”
Feeling a little less terrified, yet chiding himself for his remaining fear, his eyes riveted to the kabbalah symbols hammered into the metal, Mullaney placed his hands on either side of the lid and pushed up with his thumbs. After a heartbeat, the lid popped loose on one side. Pressing up on the opening, Mullaney lifted the lid from the box itself. He took the lid and gently placed it on the desk next to the box. Then he looked inside.
“The inside is lined … looks like purple velvet,” he said, speaking the words so they would carry over his shoulders. He could feel the others inching closer. But he kept his eyes on the box. “I can’t see anything else unless I remove the velvet.”
Testing the edges of the velvet, Mullaney could feel a slight tug at the corners. He slipped two fingers under one corner and lifted. He could feel the velvet release, so he continued around the inside of the box with his fingers, setting the velvet free. He lifted it out and set the velvet on the lid to the side, but his eyes were on the bottom of the box.
Where another symbol was hammered into the metal surface.
He reached in with his right hand, tracing the symbol with his index finger. And the sounds of heavenly warfare overwhelmed his senses.
Alitas Street, Ankara
July 23, 3:22 p.m.
The room was as dark and as cold as the grave. The smell of human decay filled his nostrils and gagged in his throat. A strip of cloth, bitter and vile to the taste, was wound like a vise around his head and tightened into his mouth. Cleveland prayed that he would not vomit.
As he fully returned to consciousness, it wasn’t the only thing he prayed.
Father, help me. I’m afraid … terrified. I heard the voice of hell speak my name. He wants my soul. My soul belongs to you, Jesus. Please, Father … Holy Spirit … release the armies of heaven. Come and do battle for me where I can’t fight for myself. Wage warfare for my soul against this demon of wickedness.
Cleveland convulsed. Something frigid, like the hand of perdition, had probed inside him and touched his spine. But the skin of his face, his lips, felt seared, as if the door to a blast furnace had opened in front of him. His senses were flailed by the opposing forces that attacked him inside and out as his body writhed under the malevolent assaults.
“Your God cannot help you here.”
The voice violated him, polluted his ears. It was a different voice, more horrible and
disgusting than the one he had heard before. But this voice was also more powerful. Its words felt like lightning-fed thunder quaking through his bones.
Filth gnawed at his cells like a spreading cancer. He could smell his clothes smoldering from the ravenous blaze that roared around the outside of his body. Cleveland’s grip on who he was wavered as his mind withered under the relentless assault.
Is this hell?
“You will suffer in agony through all eternity. Abandon all hope, you who enter here. Hope no longer exists. Your reality is torture and pain. Renounce him—for he has renounced you. All his lies are worthless. Renounce him!”
At the fringes of his sanity, Cleveland groped for the truth.
You are a liar and a deceiver, the devourer of the just. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
“You will live in torment and plead for mercy.”
I am a child of God. My Father loves me. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.”
“You will cry out for rescue through all eternity. Silence will answer you.”
My Jesus … my Jesus, I am purchased by your blood. I am righteous in your sight: pure and holy and blameless. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer.”
“Fool.”
As if a cell door had slammed shut, the heat vanished, the death grip on his spine released. Soaking wet from perspiration, Cleveland’s body was racked with violent shivering in the frigid air. A permeating odor of sulfur and burning covered him like a fog.
Cleveland gasped for a cleansing breath and found none. The fiend from the pit of hell had disappeared as suddenly as he had come. But Cleveland’s essence, his being—although nearly consumed—had survived. For now.
Thank you.
And he hurtled out of consciousness.
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 3:23 p.m.
Steadying himself against the edge of the desk, Mullaney held the metal box in both hands, its bottom turned up toward the others in the room. Rabbi Herzog had immediately identified the symbol hammered into the bottom of the box.
“It’s the shin,” he said of the Hebrew symbol for the letter W, a tone of reverence in his voice. “The emblem for El Shaddai, the name of God.”
“God the All Powerful,” whispered Father Poppodopolous. “It’s the Birkat Kohanim, the priestly benediction also known as the raising of the hands.”
Mullaney looked from one to the other. “The final sign?” he asked softly, almost to himself.
Herzog saw it plainly. In that moment, Mullaney faced the real possibility that his life could end, that he might never again see his wife or his daughters, at least not in this life. The hesitation of a warrior on the threshold of battle. Faithful and determined in his duty, yet only a mortal man.
Fear, yes. But not a coward’s fear. This was the overcoming of fear. That moment of decision, the birth of courage from the cauldron of doubt. Herzog’s affection for Mullaney only increased.
“It is … you are correct.” Herzog stood alongside Mullaney but kept a respectful distance from the box. “When Aaron would speak his blessing over the assembled Jewish community in the desert, he would lift his hands over the people. In the Pentateuch Book of Numbers, God speaks to Moses and Aaron and says, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them …’ And then comes the Aaronic blessing. It was God’s blessing for the people through Aaron. When Aaron would speak the blessing, he would take his two hands and lift them, palms down. His thumbs touched each other at the ends and his fingers were spread out, but separated. On each hand, the fingers would spread apart in the middle, like this.”
Rabbi Herzog held his hands in front of him, palms down, thumbs touching. His fingers were split apart, two on one side and two on the other side of each hand.
Poppodopolous stepped in front of Herzog’s hands. “Looks like Spock’s greeting on Star Trek.”
“Stolen from the Shin,” said Herzog, gazing at his fingers. “Every day that the Aaronic blessing is spoken, in every synagogue around the world, Jewish rabbis will lift their hands in this manner, invoking the Hebrew letter shin, the letter W. The symbol for El Shaddai. The lifting of the hands for the covering, the protection of God.”
Mullaney was nodding his head. “It’s the confirmation, isn’t it?” he asked. “Confirmation of the last line of symbols in the Gaon’s prophecy. That it’s time to present the box of power to the enemy. It’s time for me to leave.”
39
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 3:28 p.m.
Turning to the desk, Mullaney replaced the velvet lining and covered the box with the lid. Folding the steel mesh over the box, he lowered it onto the shelf, slid the shelf into the blast container, and closed the cover. He pulled the bar clockwise, locking the door in place, then pulled close the outside clasp. For a moment, he rested his hands against the container and took a deep breath.
Hughes was on her phone, pulling more strings. Father Poppodopolous, exercising discretion after a hushed but frantic conversation with Rabbi Herzog, had taken his leave five minutes earlier, just before Mullaney petitioned Palmyra Parker to join him in the sitting room just off Joseph Cleveland’s bedroom.
Neither sat.
“He’s your father,” said Mullaney. “I don’t know if this will save his life or put him in even more danger.”
“Yes, but he’s your ambassador,” said Parker. Her words were clipped, urgent, pleading. “And he can’t be in any more danger than he is right now. He’s not getting out of Ankara alive unless somebody goes and rescues him.”
Mullaney knew what he had to do, but every instinct from his experience and his training made him feel like it was a mistake. “But how can I give this box, with all its power, into the hands of the guy who’s trying to kill us all? God knows what he’ll do with it. I just …”
Mullaney could feel the presence before he could see or hear anything. He looked up and around the room.
Parker was startled. “What?”
The molecular structure of a corner of the sitting room warped and morphed and shimmered like tree limbs covered with ice in a blustery wind. A shape began to materialize.
“Oh …” Parker’s hand covered her mouth, stifling further words.
The top of the wings furled behind his back were as tall as the eight-foot ceiling, and his head, covered with a silver helmet that continued down the back of his neck, just cleared it. His sword was out of its scabbard, held in his right hand, flat against his silver breastplate. It was Bayard. He looked ready for a fight … and he wasted no time.
“Guardian, you must fight with the weapon in your hands.”
Mullaney wasn’t about to argue with an eight-foot angel, but his fear for Cleveland’s life and his reluctance to hand so much power into the hands of evil caused him to hesitate. “But—”
“Guardian,” Bayard interrupted, “the box of power is a weapon. That has been its purpose from the beginning. While there was divine power in the messages received and written down by the Gaon, the prophecies themselves did not possess the power to hold back and deny the intentions of the immortal evil ones as this box does. You need immortal power to combat immortal enemies.
“That,” said Bayard, pointing with his sword to the blast container, “is the box of power. It was anointed from the throne room of heaven and has a mission of its own. No evil shall ever stand against it. It was formed as a weapon against evil … this evil … and now is the time to unleash that weapon.”
A vague thought scratched at Mullaney’s memory. Something Bayard once said.
“Wait, I remember you saying that no mortal man can touch the box and live,” said Mullaney. “But this Man of Violence, he is … was … like you, right? He’s not a mortal man, is he?”
A struggle was evident in the features of Bayard’s face, a tightening in the cheeks, worry lines at the corners of his eyes. He lowered his head,
chin to his chest, and pulled in a deep breath. He stuck the point of his sword into the floor and rested his arms against its hilt as he knelt down on one knee, coming to eye level with both Parker and Mullaney.
“Yes, you are correct,” he said, a distance to his voice. “My enemy was once my brother. But pride consumed the Prince of Light, and many were seduced into believing his lies. Our enemy is no mortal. And yes, no mortal being may touch the box and live,” Bayard agreed. “But the weapons that we fight with are not only mortal weapons. Our weapons are also effective against the immortal. And not everything that is immortal is visible to the enemy. The box of power has a mission of its own. It was made not only to protect the prophecies of the Gaon. That was its original purpose, but not its only one. The box of power is also a weapon that God has designed and ordained to obliterate the enemies of heaven that oppose us and extinguish their evil desires. Its full power will only be revealed as it accomplishes its ultimate purpose. Do not deny the box its intended purpose. The plans of God will not be denied.”
“But then why are they doing this?” Parker’s frustration, fueled by fear, stoked by exhaustion, spilled into her words. “What are they after? They know the end of the Bible as well as we do. They know what’s coming. There’s been so much death … and suffering. Why?”
Bayard inclined his head toward Parker. “Because death and suffering are his currency. The pride of the evil one exceeds all understanding,” he said. “Throughout all time, his intention has been the same, to overthrow the purposes of God. Today, as we move closer to the return of the King, it is to change the end of the book. Prevent the return of the King. Reverse the outcome of the Battle of Armageddon. Emerge victorious against the host of heaven and exalt himself in a rebuilt Temple.” Bayard nodded his head. “Those are his plans, and they have changed little over time.”
“But that’s impossible, right?” Mullaney was stunned. “God’s sovereign purpose cannot be overcome.”
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