The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3)

by Alan Jacobson

  “Forgive me for asking,” Vail said, “but why didn’t you turn them over to the Israeli government?”

  “The pages weren’t yours,” Uzi said. “They belonged to the Jewish people. It’s one of the most important artifacts of our religion—of all religions that grew out of the Torah—what some call the Old Testament.”

  Halevi sank back in his chair. He finished the Arak in his glass and stared into its empty bottom. “The Aleppo community was given the codex for safekeeping. We protected it for six hundred years. We were never supposed to let it out of our sight. And as soon as it left our hands, the most important part of it—the first two hundred pages—were stolen. We’re talking about almost the entire Torah, the foundational narrative of the Jewish people. The Five Books of Moses. Genesis all the way to Deuteronomy.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Uzi said.

  Yakov looked at his son, who nodded vigorously, silently urging him to come clean. But the old man sat there a long moment, staring at the carpet.

  The sounds of the children playing in the other room wormed their way into Vail’s thoughts. Cars honked outside. And in the back of her mind, an internal clock was going off like an alarm, telling her she needed to figure out how this fit with the terror attacks.

  Yakov said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I was protecting us from ourselves. What’s in those pages would make it impossible for Israel to ever have peace with the Palestinians.”

  25

  Uzi sat forward on the couch. “Say what? How could a tenth-century book affect a peace process in the twenty-first century?”

  Yakov licked his lips, then took another glass and poured more Arak. He offered the bottle to Uzi and Vail. Both declined.

  “The codex consists of beautifully handwritten, perfect Hebrew. Almost 3 million characters, all impeccably drawn on parchment that measures 10 inches by 13 ½ inches, 28 lines to a column, three columns to a page. But …” He stopped, took a drink. “There are also tiny notes in the margins. Most of them describe how the Torah should be read. Some point out when a certain word appears for the first time or when a word’s not to be spoken aloud, that sort of thing. But a few of the notes are different. They give the location of an ancient structure in Bethlehem. And that could make a peace agreement next to impossible.”

  “Just a guess here,” Vail said, “But this is the part you mentioned earlier that I would not understand.”

  “I’m not sure Agent Uziel fully understands it. But he has an idea, no?”

  Uzi nodded. “The geopolitics of the West Bank land are complex.”

  “There comes a time,” Vail said, “when you have to seek peace and accept a two-state solution, even if you have a valid claim to all of the land.”

  Uzi chuckled. “And therein lies the problem. The two-state solution is a western construct, a foreign concept to Middle Eastern culture. It arose because the west wanted to do something to break the impasse, to solve the problem. The Middle East is such a screwed up region, it’s easy to point to Israel, a democratic and moral society, and think, ‘Now, there’s something we can fix. We just need to carve out two countries and make peace.’ But if you understand the mind-set of the region, you know that it’s largely a problem without a solution.”

  “And what is this mind-set?” Vail asked.

  Uzi held up a hand. “Let’s first approach the issue from a western point of view. Two states make sense because Arabs lived on some of that land too, at times, so that’d be a fair compromise. Except that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al Humat, al Qaeda, and ISIL are on Israel’s doorstep. To the north and east there’s ISIL in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, ISIL and an al Qaeda affiliate near the Golan Heights—and in Iraq. To the south, the Sinai’s a terrorist breeding ground. Not to mention a nuclear Iran nine hundred miles away—kind of like the distance from Manhattan to Chicago. All these things need to be dealt with in a negotiated deal.

  “Question is, with Iran supplying missiles to its proxies and allies in Hamas, al Humat, and Hezbollah, is a true peace possible? Even if most Pales­tinians are in favor of the Israel Defense Force pulling out of the West Bank, they know the Palestinian Authority can’t control the extremists. Within a year, black-masked Hamas or ISIL fighters will overrun the West Bank, which is smack dab in the middle of Israel. You think Syria’s a mess? Just wait. Like I said, it’s complicated—but despite all the obstacles, it’s worth pursuing. If you have a valid partner to negotiate with.”

  “The codex adds another complication,” Yakov said. “Those notes in the margins, they were written eleven centuries ago. Ben Asher and Ben Buya and their scholars weren’t concerned about the land claims of the present day—because the dispute didn’t exist back then. So you basically have an unadulterated truth about rights to the land. Indisputable fact.”

  Halevi had gotten fidgety, shifting his weight and pulling on his black beard: visibly uncomfortable. “Father, we have been through this.”

  Yakov shook his head. “And I disagree with you.”

  “There is no such thing as truth,” Halevi said. “There is no such thing as fact.”

  Whoa, hold on a second. Vail cocked her head. “As an officer of the law, I can tell you that there absolutely is truth. Facts are just that—truths, events that happened.”

  “I’m speaking as a rabbi. Philosophically, Agent Vail. Each person believes his view is objective, when in fact it’s subjective because he approaches a topic or an issue with his own worldview. And his worldview influences his read of documents, of evidence, of history. He considers facts through the lens of his preconceived belief system, and he accepts as true all of those things that reinforce his worldview. He rejects all of those that don’t.”

  “But truth is based on a set of facts that actually happened,” Uzi said.

  “Ah, but my truth may be different from your truth because I’m telling you what I saw. And what I saw is different from what you saw because I see through my eyes, which means those facts have already been interpreted through my lens—my past experiences, my observations, my beliefs. My filters. So there is no such thing as a singular truth—not even in mathematics. There are too many variables. It’s truth according to me. Follow?”

  “I understand the concept,” Vail said. “But it’s hard for me to accept given everything I’ve devoted my life to. Law and order, evidence, testimony.”

  “Then I’ve given you something to ponder. The rabbi in me is happy. But here’s my point. Take it a step farther and apply these concepts to conflict resolution—in this case, a peace process. Everyone sees the world through his own narrative and doesn’t accept the veracity of the other person’s narrative. That’s what we’re dealing with regarding the Palestinians. The Palestinians reject the evidence that the First and Second Temples existed because it doesn’t fit their worldview. They believe that Jews have no claim to the land of Israel. And because of that belief, the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. This goes, of course, to the heart of the Hamas and al Humat charters. It’s all stated there in black and white for anyone to read. It’s why Palestinian textbooks teach the children that one day they will kick the Jews out and inhabit all of the land.”

  “And that brings us back to what I was talking about before,” Yakov said. “The notes in the margins of the codex. Some of them make specific mention of King David’s palaces. They even note where the kingdom was located.”

  “And why is this a problem?” Vail asked. “Sounds like a good thing.”

  Yakov smiled for the first time—wanly. “Because a couple of years ago ruins were discovered that archaeologists believe are from one of David’s palaces. There were earthenware storage vessels inside with Hebrew impressions that read, ‘To the king.’ It’s a problem because I know these ruins are what’s described in those notes in the codex.”

  “I’m still not getting it,
” Vail said.

  Halevi said, “These ruins are on Palestinian land in Bethlehem.”

  “Ah. That explains it.” Uzi nodded slowly. “Because Bethlehem is in the West Bank, there’s no way the Orthodox ministers in the Israeli government would agree to a peace deal that gives away their ancestors’ sacred land, land where one of King David’s palaces sits.”

  “This is why the settlers live in Area C in the West Bank,” Halevi said. “There is historical record of Jews having lived in the West Bank. Other archaeological finds—buildings, documents, tablets, burial grounds, coins, parchments, Torahs. It’s very compelling evidence, if not conclusive. And when you put it together with a document written in the tenth century, at a time when there was no land dispute, no reason to lie or manipulate information, you have something that not only directly contradicts the Palestinian worldview but it makes it virtually impossible for Orthodox Jews to give up land that needs to be part of a two-state solution.”

  “That problem with facts and truths my son mentioned,” Yakov said, “which he fixates on … When you start to line up multiple instances of disparate, unrelated instances that corroborate and support a set of proposed facts, these facts became less suspect and move toward being a real, verifiable fact. A truth.”

  “I understand that,” Uzi said. “But land swaps would be part of any peace deal to meet security needs. The Israelis and Palestinians could simply swap that Biblically significant land for other land.”

  “You’re not talking about ‘just’ a palace,” Halevi said, “but a kingdom that covered a very large area. The Jews have lived there for thousands of years. That’s the problem with the settler movement. I don’t disagree with them. But what you said earlier, Agent Vail, that at some point you have to compromise, I agree. There needs to be peace, and if the radical factions can be neutralized and if we can have a legitimate government on the other side that can enforce an agreement, like Egypt and Jordan have, it’s best for everyone.”

  Uzi turned to Vail. “And that brings us to the other obstacle.”

  “The mind-set of the region that you mentioned.”

  “Right. The notion of compromise doesn’t compute in the Middle East. The unspoken MO is that giving something to your opponent doesn’t promote reconciliation with them, it just tells them they can demand more. You give them something, they’ll be at your throat for more. Compromise is seen as a weakness. So you don’t dare give anything—not an inch. It’s the way the Arab world thinks. And since half the Jews in Israel were kicked out of their homes in Muslim countries in the twentieth century, they’re intimately familiar with the concept.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Vail said. “It’s crazy.”

  “To you and me, yeah. But in the context of the Middle East, it makes perfect sense. It’s the way things are done, the way they have been done. But even if you can fight that backward mind-set, you’ve got another insurmountable obstacle: groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al Humat don’t want a peace deal, they want the land. All the land—all of Israel. No matter what proof is unearthed, they’ll never accept that Jews have lived there for thousands of years.”

  “The irony,” Halevi said, “is that in Islam there are ancient documents that refer to the Temple and talk about King David being in Jerusalem, about Jews living there. These are their own ancient texts. Yet the extremists reject them because they can’t accept it. They refuse to accept it.”

  Vail thought about that a second. “Do they know what they’ve got? With the codex.”

  The elder rabbi leaned back in his seat. “Do they know the importance of the codex and its value to the world’s religions and, obviously, to Israel? I have no doubt.”

  “Right,” Vail said. “That’s why they broke into the vault. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the notes in the margin.”

  Yakov pulled on his beard. “I don’t think so. They’d have to be able to read and interpret the Hebrew and I just don’t think Islamic extremists are interested in reading a holy Jewish text. They’d also have to put it together with the Bethlehem archaeological find, which the government has tried to keep under wraps because of the potential fallout with the Palestinians. The bigger the deal you make about it, the more of an issue it becomes. Negotiations become more difficult, start to look like blackmail.”

  And they’re apparently difficult enough without ancient texts adding complications.

  Vail rose from the couch, followed by Uzi. “Thank you.” She pulled out her card and handed it to Halevi. “You think of anything else, please let us know.”

  26

  Uzi checked his phone while they descended in the slow-moving elevator.

  Vail took a deep breath and kept her gaze on the floor.

  “You okay? Oh—your claustrophobia.”

  “I’m fine. We’ll be out of here in a minute.” Or an hour at the rate this thing moves. “Talk to me, take my mind off it.”

  “Mo hasn’t replied to my texts or phone calls. I tried reaching him before I went back upstairs.”

  “That’s annoying.”

  “Annoying? How about unprofessional, irresponsible, sus—” The elevator hit the ground floor with a thud and Vail pushed the steel door open.

  They walked outside, where DeSantos was waiting in the front courtyard.

  “Anything from Mo?” Uzi asked.

  “Nothing. Goes straight to voicemail. Anything worthwhile up there?”

  “Karen’ll fill you in. I’ve gotta make a call.” Uzi headed toward the sidewalk as he pulled up the number. It was answered by Isamu.

  “A year, year and a half ago we worked together on the Hades case,” Uzi said. “We used the domain awareness system to—”

  “I remember,” Isamu said. “Your name kind of makes you unforgettable.”

  Uzi had to laugh. “Listen, I’m in town on a counterterrorism case and I need some help. If I send you a photo of someone, can you run it through the facial rec system and let me know if he’s been anywhere in the city? I gotta find him.”

  “Suspect?”

  “A person of interest. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Send it over, I’ll see what I can do. Facial rec still isn’t up and running everywhere, but maybe we’ll get a hit.”

  Uzi thanked him, then stood there thinking before rejoining Vail and DeSantos. Spying on a fellow federal agent was an extreme measure … but was it crossing the line? Perhaps. But for Fahad to go dark, without explanation, was potentially problematic considering who he was—and his family history. It could be innocent—but short of injury or emergency, there was no good excuse for his lack of contact in the middle of a major investigation.

  “Let’s go,” DeSantos said with a shove to his shoulder.

  The jostling woke Uzi from his fugue. He pulled out his keys as they started toward their car. “Did Karen fill you in?”

  “She did.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She went down the block to get us something to eat. Something the rabbi recommended as you were leaving. Rooga—rooga-something. You know, that thing you do with your throat. The ‘ch’ sound, like you’re bringing up sputum.

  “Rugalach.”

  DeSantos pointed at Uzi. “Yeah, that.”

  “It’s a twisted pastry, kind of like a cross between a strudel and a croissant.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So what do you think?” Uzi asked. “About what Karen told you.”

  DeSantos shrugged. “Obviously we need to find these missing pages.”

  Uzi stopped walking. “It’s not obvious to me. The codex is incredibly important in world history, no question. It burns me that a terrorist organization has those pages—but tracking down stolen artifacts is not our job. We’ve got enough on our plate.”

  “You’re missing the point,” DeSantos said,
turning and walking backward along the sidewalk, facing Uzi. “Find those codex pages and we’ll find Kadir Abu Sahmoud.”

  “Don’t you mean the opposite?” Uzi asked. “Our job is to investigate and find Sahmoud—and when we do, we’ll find the codex pages.”

  “Boychick, you’re thinking like an FBI agent.”

  Uzi stopped walking. “I am an FBI agent. I’m in charge of the DC Joint Terrorism Task Force, remember?”

  DeSantos closed the gap between them. “Look,” he said, keeping his voice low, “right now you’re working a case that sits on the border between domestic investigation and black ops. That’s why OPSIG is involved.”

  “I didn’t ask for this assignment. I should be doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “You are doing what you’re supposed to be doing: helping prevent another attack and catching the bad guy. Does it matter how you do it?”

  “I think it does. I gave up the covert ops life.”

  “And Knox pulled you back in. To pay off a debt.”

  Uzi clenched his jaw. Years ago he had omitted key information from his original FBI application—but Knox knew the truth all along and he waited patiently until the time was right to call in his chit. It’s the way Knox worked—quietly, patiently in the background, picking his spots to swoop in and pounce: leverage his intel, win concessions to make people do what they did not want to do, reveal what they did not want to reveal.

  VAIL SAW UZI AND DeSANTOS down the block. She whistled but they did not respond. She continued toward them carrying a clear plastic container filled with pastries.

  “These are dangerously delicious. I got chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate. Hope that’s okay.”

  Uzi and DeSantos were staring at each other: silent anger.

  I leave for five minutes and the men forget how to play nicely together. “I sense some tension.” She studied their faces a moment, then said, “Let me guess. You guys disagree on what we should do next.”