“My name is Greg McKenzie,” I said. “I just talked with your friend David Wolfson. He suggested you could help me with an old document that’s probably written in Hebrew.”
“I’ll be happy to try, but he could have done that. He speaks, reads and writes Hebrew fluently.”
“He said you were something of an archaeologist. This document may not be just old. It could be ancient.”
“Really?”
“It’s a small scroll. Appears to be written on parchment.”
“Where did you get it?”
I looked at my watch, anxious to get moving. “It came from Israel, but I’d rather tell you the story in person. Would it be possible to bring it over now?”
“By all means,” he said, a note of excitement in his voice.
I jotted down the address and hung up the phone. But before I could get up from my desk, it rang again. The caller ID box showed a number that looked vaguely familiar. Then it hit me. It was one of a block of numbers used by the Metro Police Department. I had become familiar with them while at the district attorney’s office. Surely they hadn’t discovered anything about the vandalism of our house. I picked up.
“This is Detective Adamson with the Metro Police Department,” said a businesslike male voice. “Could I speak to Mrs. Jill McKenzie?”
“Sorry, she isn’t here,” I said.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Not really,” I said. “It shouldn’t be too long, though.” That was certainly my hope.
“Do you know where she is?”
Minds have a way of playing dirty tricks, and for an instant a horrible picture flashed through my head, the crumpled body of my wife tossed out on the roadside. “This is her husband, Greg,” I said. “Something wrong?”
“Sorry,” Adamson said. “I didn’t mean to shake you up, but we had an anonymous call that said your wife was missing. We hadn’t received any official report, so I was just checking into it. You’re sure she’s okay?”
He had a rough voice that made me think of dragging dead limbs through the woods. It was not pleasant to listen to.
“Why would anyone have made a report like that?” I asked. That was disturbing enough, but I didn’t like the idea of cops or anyone else screwing up the exchange of Jill for the scroll. “She was fine when she left here.”
“When was that?”
“I’m not sure of the time.” I had to be careful. If you lie to the police, you’ll soon have to lie again to cover the first one. Then another, and before long a clever interrogator will trip you up and tear your story to shreds. I knew. I’d done it enough times myself. “We just got back from a two-week trip and she was going shopping. She can shop for hours. It’s one of her favorite pastimes.” That part was certainly true.
“Do you drive a brown sport utility vehicle, Mr. McKenzie?”
“I drive a brown Jeep Grand Cherokee. Why do you ask?”
“The tip said a man in a brown SUV was seen around your wife’s car, which was parked on Andrew Jackson Parkway. He used the term ‘abandoned.’”
“Abandoned?” The shock in my voice was genuine, not from what he had said but from the idea of someone making such a report.
“Right. We found it empty, locked up tight.”
“She’s a careful lady. That’s exactly how she would have left it. Sounds like somebody’s trying to make trouble for me, Detective Adamson. Maybe someone with a police badge.”
Adamson’s voice hardened. “I’m well aware of your problems with the department. I can assure you this has nothing to do with it. Detective Tremaine knows nothing about this report. I was given the call and I’m following up the same as I would with any case.”
I listened to his meticulous denial. Maybe I was being a bit too hard on him. I didn’t know Adamson. “Have you checked the hospitals?”
“All of them. No report of her.”
“Then let me get busy calling some friends before I punch the panic button. You have no idea about the identity of the anonymous caller? Did he have an accent, any peculiarities of speech?”
“No accent, nothing unusual. The call was made from an unlisted number.”
It didn’t sound like the man who claimed to be holding Jill, but he wouldn’t be working alone. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” I said. “And I’d appreciate your doing the same.”
Adamson’s voice sounded more a threat than a promise. “Don’t worry. I will.”
I hung up and headed for the kitchen. Getting Jill’s broom from the pantry, I pulled off a bristle and broke it into shorter pieces. I closed the entry doors on them at eye level, leaving the ends barely visible from the outside. They would be my telltales. If any were missing when I returned, it would mean someone had opened the door.
I hurried out to the car with my scroll-in-the-canister. Somebody was setting me up. I didn’t want to believe anybody at the police department would stoop to getting involved in something like this, but with all the trouble I’d had over Detective Mark Tremaine, I couldn’t discount it. And as I headed out the driveway, I found it equally difficult to fathom why the people after the scroll–presumably the only ones aware that Jill was missing–would make such a report to the police.
I recalled the Middle Easterner’s words of warning: “I would advise you to be most cautious in what you do...” The implication was that I should not bring in the police. Yet they had apparently made an anonymous tip to the cops that Jill was missing.
It made no sense.
Chapter 11
Nashville was in the middle of rush hour. I maneuvered through the glut of traffic while keeping an eye out for anyone who might have me under surveillance. I had spotted no one by the time I pulled off the Inner Loop at Demonbreun Street and headed up the hill toward Sixteenth Avenue. I fought the urge to stop somewhere and buy a pack of Marlboros. This busy thoroughfare forms the heart and soul of Nashville’s Music Row. In fact, it’s called Music Square East for the first few blocks south of Demonbreun, where you pass the likes of BMI, Sony, SESAC, Polygram, Warner Brothers and a string of record labels, music publishers, booking agents, promoters and such. After that Sixteenth becomes a residential discard, a hodgepodge of castaway houses, a few occupied by owners who go for quaintness and convenience. Dr. Julian Quancey Welch was one of these.
I found Welch’s number on a brick bungalow. The lots along here were narrow, with the houses bunched together. Everyone was in close communion with his neighbors.
This time of year night came on early. And cold. I was happy I had worn my heavy blue jacket.
It was dark here, midway between streetlights. As I started up the gravel drive, I spotted the rear of a Ford Escort parked toward the back of the house. The professor wasn’t into big cars or big houses.
The walkway turned out to be a row of stepping stones that had gone askew from too many “gully-washers,” as they say around here. I hopscotched across them to the porch. He had left a light on for me. I pressed the button and waited.
After a few moments, the door opened and a tall, well-groomed black man looked out at me.
“Dr. Welch?” I asked.
“J. Q. will do.” He smiled. “You must be Greg McKenzie. Come on in.”
“I understand you prefer J. Q. to Juice,” I said.
He gave me a pained expression. “David Wolfson has been talking out of school. How do you know him?”
The living room was comfortably furnished with a sofa and recliner facing the TV. A coffee table and an end table were piled high with magazines and books, along with a stereo that reminded me of Wolfson’s comment about a jazz jiving preacher-man. An arched opening offered a small dining area
“I just returned from a tour of the Holy Land,” I said. “Our guide was a Messianic Jewish friend of Wolfson’s. He had asked me to call David and give him his regards.”
“Come on in the study,” Welch said. He led the way down a narrow hall. He stepped into a room that had been a
bedroom in earlier times, but was now a library. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, all packed end to end with volumes of various sizes and colors.
“I guess college professors do a lot of reading,” I said.
He nodded. “Reading, writing, researching. It wasn’t really what my father had in mind for me. He was a Methodist preacher in Birmingham, and he sort of thought I’d follow him into the pulpit.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I admire my dad, but I’m not him. Here, have a seat.”
He motioned to a chair beside a roll-top filled with envelopes, slips of paper, thin pamphlets, and such oddities as a wooden elephant and a small figurine of Buddha. He sat in swivel chair. “I presume that container in your hand holds the scroll you mentioned? It came from Israel?”
I looked at the container. “I’m afraid so. It’s a complicated story, but I’d better tell you so you know where I’m coming from.”
On the way over, I had decided to level with him, since I knew he would be concerned about the document’s origin. I told him almost everything. I said the people who trashed my house made a threatening call and demanded I hand over the scroll. I omitted what was most important–Jill being held hostage. He sat there and listened in obvious amazement, his hands resting on his ample midriff like the Buddha on his desk. When I finished I handed him the container.
Welch cleared off his desk, opened the can and gingerly removed the parchment from it. He laid it on the wooden surface and began to weave his head back and forth above it, performing a thorough examination without ever touching it. Some of the edges were ragged where small pieces had broken off.
“I hope we can unroll it without doing too much damage,” he said, musing out loud. “I suspect it’s been flattened out and re-rolled several times already.” He looked up at me. “And you have no idea where it was found?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He placed a heavy metal strip across the open edge, then slowly began to unroll it. “Hebrew reads from right to left,” he said as he studied the faded writing. “This is fascinating.” A smile tugged at his broad mouth.
I stood up to look but all I could see was row after row of strange characters without a break. “It looks like all one word,” I said.
“This is classical Hebrew,” he explained. “They didn’t bother to separate the words or use any punctuation. It also has no vowels. That really makes it challenging. It starts off identifying the writer with the kabbalists, a student of esoteric Jewish mysticism.”
“You’re getting over my head,” I said, frowning.
“It concerns the mystical or symbolic meaning of various biblical texts. Mostly from the Torah, the Book of Ruth and the Song of Solomon. It was first documented late in the first century A.D. by Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai. He was a kabbalist, supposed to have written much of the Zohar, meaning ‘Book of Splendor.’ It’s the classic text about Jewish mysticism.”
He fell silent for a bit as he examined the document, then unrolled it to the second page of characters. “This writer–he never divulges his name–says he was a member of a group of Jews, maybe Zealots, I don’t know. Anyway, they journeyed to Babylon after receiving word that some stolen treasure from Solomon’s temple had been found hidden there.”
“Isn’t Babylon in present-day Iraq?”
“It’s on the Euphrates River about fifty-five miles south of Baghdad. What’s left of the ruins, that is. Nebuchadnezzar hauled off all the sacred objects from the Temple in Jerusalem, most of it made of gold or silver. That was when he sent the Judeans into exile back around 587 BC. His dynasty didn’t last too long, though. Babylon was pretty much done for by 275 BC. That’s when the Seleucids moved the population to their new capital on the Tigris.”
He read a bit more, rubbing his chin. I was getting impatient. “What’s it all about?”
“According to this fellow, they found the ten lampstands, called golden candlesticks in the King James Version, and carried them back to Jerusalem.”
“Lampstands?”
“Menorahs, the seven-branched candelabrum. They held oil lamps in Solomon’s Temple and stood on each side of the Sanctuary. Only the priests were allowed in there.”
I nodded, remembering the tour. “We saw a model of the Temple at the Holy Land Hotel.”
“That was the one Herod built. It was on a little more grand scale than the first Temple. But Solomon was no slouch. His place of worship was a sight to behold. Let me show you.”
He pulled a small brown Bible from a shelf and opened it to reveal a model of Solomon’s Temple and a plan of the grounds. Then he flipped a few pages and said, “Here’s your candlesticks.”
I read:
The Golden Candlestick was fashioned of pure gold, containing a central shaft and ornamentation of knobs, flowers, and bowls. There were six branches extending outward, three from each side. The branches were ornamented identically with the shaft. The bowls were shaped like almonds. A lamp with sufficient oil and cotton to burn through the night was mounted at the top of the shaft and on each branch.
The text of Exodus gives no dimensions for the candlestick. Nevertheless, a height of 3 cubits (6 feet) and a breadth of 2½ cubits (5 feet) would keep it in proportion with the other furnishings. The Golden Candlestick’s value is defined as one talent, which at the present value of gold would be $32,492.24.
I looked up. “Ten of them would be worth about three hundred and twenty thousand bucks. Not bad.”
Dr. Welch turned to the front of the Bible. He read, “Copyright 1956. Things have changed a bit since then. A gold talent is fifteen hundred and seventy-two ounces. Figure about three hundred dollars an ounce–I’m not sure of the exact price of gold now...” He punched a few numbers into his calculator. “That makes them worth four million, seven hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. Definitely worth mounting a recovery operation.”
I looked at my watch. Time was winding down on me. “Does the scroll say what these people did with the lampstands after they got back to Jerusalem?” I asked.
He looked back at the parchment, which he had flattened out completely now. It was less than a yard long. “It gets a little hazy there,” he said. “The Jews had been in revolt since 66 A.D., and the Romans under General Titus captured Jerusalem in the year 70. Then they proceeded to demolish the Temple and most of the rest of the city. Apparently this group arrived shortly after the destruction. The writer says they worked at night, digging into the rubble, and buried the lampstands, covering them with flat stones for protection. Shortly after they finished, Roman soldiers took them prisoner. Somehow this scribe–he had to have been a scribe to produce such beautiful lettering–managed to escape across the Jordan. He wrote this and planned to hide it in the hope that it would be found by a future generation. After peace had returned, they could recover the golden lampstands and use them in a new Temple.”
Thoughts of Jill closed in. I tried to think. This unnamed Jew must have been in Jordan when he wrote the document. But where had he hidden it? And more importantly, where had they buried the lampstands? I asked Dr. Welch.
He looked up with a smile. “I think you’ll have to go back to David Wolfson with that question.”
“Why?”
“The writer identified himself with the kabbalists. They’re the people who started the Torah codes business. I’ve read a little about it, but I was completely turned off by all the ridiculous claims people have been making. Among other things, some people tried to use the codes to ‘prove’ Jesus was not the Messiah. David and I have argued about all this, but one thing he did convince me of was the historical basis of biblical cryptology. In Jeremiah, for example, the word ‘Sheshach’ is used for ‘Babylon.’ It’s done by letter substitution in a code called Atbash. Anyway, this kabbalistic encoding led to the modern development of cryptology.”
I checked my watch again. Nearly six o’clock. My home number was set to forward calls to the cell ph
one, which I had stuck in my jacket pocket. But I did not want to be here when the mysterious Palestinian called. With the phone set to vibrate rather than ring, I had ignored two calls while Dr. Welch was talking. Neither was a number I needed to answer immediately. What I really needed to do was get moving.
“Are you saying there’s some kind of code in that scroll?” I asked.
“It’s likely. He never says where they buried the lampstands. But presumably that’s what he’s referring to when he writes: ‘The location will be found within.’ If the Romans had turned up the document, they would’ve had no idea what he meant.”
“And you think David could decode it?”
“Definitely. He has a computer program that can search Hebrew text and pull out coded passages.”
I zipped up my jacket. “I’d better be on my way then,” I said. “We’ll just roll this up–”
“Don’t do that.” He reached out to stop me. “I’ll put it between two sheets of plastic and back it with cardboard. It won’t stand much more handling. By the way, I guess you know it’s against Israeli law to remove something like this from the country.”
“I suspected as much,” I said. “But I had no idea this is what I had bought as a souvenir.”
“I think you should call the Israeli Embassy and let them handle these people, whoever they are.”
“I wish I could,” I said. “But there’s a complication I didn’t mention. I don’t believe it would be advisable for either of us if I did. But I really appreciate your help. And I promise to let you know how it turns out.”
The look he gave me said he was against what I was doing. Nevertheless, he found some plastic sheets in a closet and sealed the flattened scroll inside, then taped cardboard in front and back. I left his house with what had the look of a large picture or a poster. It was about the size and look of a package I had sneaked into the house for Jill some years back, a portrait of her mother and dad based on an old photograph. I had surprised her with it on her birthday. She was as emotional as I’d ever seen her when she opened it. She gave me a bear hug. Right now I ached for that closeness.
Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4 Page 6