But posing as a taxi driver had worked once before, and Tarik Ben Ali, their leader, thought it worth the chance. But Tarik didn’t have to sit here behind the wheel, scanning forward and backward for New York City police, his heart jumping every time a delivery truck nearly ripped off the rear quarter panel of the mustard-yellow Ford. Mustafa clutched his chest in alarm as the driver of a rumbling cement mixer laid heavily on his air horn. The massive vehicle swerved, like a two-ton python, back into the main lane of Fifth Avenue and careened across 84th Street.
Mustafa had the keys in his hand to turn on the ignition, determined to find a safer place to wait, when they came out of the building three-quarters of the way down the block.
“We could walk down to Lexington and get the Six train,” said Connor as he and Stew exited the Metropolitan Museum opposite 83rd Street.
Manthey looked uptown on Fifth and raised his right arm. “Let’s take a cab instead.”
Its flashers still blinking, the taxi slowed to a halt as Connor jumped in and Stew followed. “Bowery at Prince,” he told the driver. “Better to go down the FDR and cut across Houston than try to go through the city.”
The FDR … it brought back unpleasant memories for Mustafa, who nearly three weeks ago had been a passenger in a truck that crashed on the 59th Street exit ramp of the FDR as it tried to escape the police. Mustafa still carried the bruises and sore right shoulder from that crash as a memory.
Mustafa turned off the flashers, checked his rearview mirror, and was about to pull away.
“Don’t go straight,” said the older man in the back. “Go left on 82nd and cross town. There will be less traffic that way. Then you can get on the FDR at 79th Street.”
You give orders like Tarik Ben Ali.
Mustafa edged his cab across two lanes of congested traffic on Fifth and managed to turn left on 82nd. He knew it didn’t matter what route they took: the destination was the same. Only these two would not reach the Bowery Mission. At least not in their current state.
“Hey, you forgot to turn on the meter.”
Mustafa pushed the button to start the fare calculator. “Thank you, sir.” Just wait.
There was little traffic on the FDR along the East River. But as Mustafa drove his taxi off the ramp onto Houston Street, even on this end of Houston, in Alphabet City, amid the largest public housing project in New York, the street was clogged with vehicles and streaming with people. As Mustafa guided the cab farther west along the wide, four-lane avenue, the traffic and the flow of pedestrians grew heavier. On an August Saturday, with tourists swelling the ranks, it was near pandemonium. Mustafa didn’t care. This was familiar turf to Mustafa and his Prophet’s Guard brothers. And he trusted the crowds would help hide their intent.
The taxi inched to a stop at the traffic light on the corner of Avenue A.
“It might be faster if we walked,” said the older man. Mustafa began to panic. It’s too soon. They can’t get out now.
“Wait, sir. There must be another way.”
Manthey’s eyes were on the driver, and he was about to suggest they bear right on the other side of the intersection and make the angled turn to drive up First Street, when the back doors on both sides of the taxi opened at the same time. Stew felt somebody push hard against his back, shoving him into the middle of the seat where he collided with Connor’s right shoulder.
Sitting on the driver’s side, Connor’s first thought when the door opened was annoyance that somebody was trying to hop into their cab while they were still using it. That thought lasted about a millisecond as the intruder threw the weight of his body at Bohannon and drove him into the middle of the back seat. It took no great flash of understanding for Connor to know what was happening. He knew his assailants. He didn’t know their intention. But he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
Connor yielded to the driving force against his left shoulder, allowing his right hip to pivot off the seat. His head and right shoulder slammed into Manthey’s chest. Connor quickly pulled his knees to his chest and—with his hands pushing against the seat—kicked out with both feet, hitting one of the intruders in the chest with his heavy Timberland boots, driving the man up and back, half out of the driver-side door.
“Drive!” hissed the man hanging out the door as he reached wildly for something to save him.
As the vehicle sprang to action, Manthey’s body jolted toward Connor. A searing pain punctured Manthey’s right side as the right shoulder strap to his backpack—holding the sprockets—was cut away. His left hand grabbed for the strap over his left shoulder as the pack was pulled away from his back.
Mustafa angled to the right to race up First Street … except the traffic light was still red. He missed the three young men who were halfway across Houston Street, but the Daily News delivery truck didn’t miss him. As the taxi bolted into the intersection, the truck slammed into its right front fender, throwing the taxi into a spin and turning the occupants into projectiles.
Hurled back to his right, against his attacker, Manthey heard a sickening crack as the rear passenger-side door of the taxi slammed shut. There was a cry of pain, and the sudden release of pressure against his shoulder.
Connor tried to lift himself off the floor of the cab, but his hand slipped on something wet and he dropped back onto the floor. Connor looked up to see Stew staring at him, his right hand dripping with blood.
“I’ve been stabbed.”
Stew’s eyes shone with the wild fury of a predator about to defend itself, but the backpack was held tightly in his left hand.
Connor quickly scanned the cab. They were alone.
“You’ll be okay, Stew. We can—”
The sirens were already getting closer, the Good Samaritans lining up at both doors.
“I’m a doctor. Please, just stay where you are.”
14
6:00 p.m., Jerusalem
A sweet aroma of cooking tomatoes, heavy with garlic, drifted into every corner of Kallie’s apartment. The air-conditioning was cranked up, doing battle with the August heat that sucked dry every drop of moisture and shortened every reservoir of patience. Sammy Rizzo was in the kitchen making “gravy,” what non-Italians call spaghetti sauce. Two hours ago, Rizzo stood up, said, “Cooking is therapy,” and walked out the front door. An hour later he was back, a bag-toting taxi driver in his wake. Rizzo retired to the kitchen with his supplies, and the only evidence of his presence was the pungent aroma and a few scattered snippets of Puccini’s La Bohème sliced to silence in mid-sentence as if Rizzo’s joy collided with the raw memory of his grief.
Annie was intoxicated by the familiar smell of cooking gravy, visions of her Grandmother Loscalzo’s house on a Sunday afternoon, all eleven sons and daughters and their families arranged around a motley collection of tables as her grandma carried platter after platter of homemade pasta and meatballs into the dining room. It was a struggle for her to remain focused on the conversation … except the conversation was outrageously impossible.
“Look, it’s time for a reality check here,” said Deirdre. She was standing in the alcove, a stack of dishes in her hands as she prepared to set the table for dinner. “You guys are tossing around the Ark of the Covenant, Aaron’s staff, and the garden of Eden like you’re putting together a shopping list for the grocery store. Don’t you realize how crazy this all sounds? And even if the most bizarre story in the history of the world happened to be true, then what? What are you going to do? Take out a map and measure out the distance to the garden … check out the road conditions? Come on … so what if the Prophet’s Guard is looking for Aaron’s staff, even if we assume you’re right and this staff was Moses’s H-bomb. What are they going to do? Where are they going to find it? How could it make any difference at all?”
Annie sat in an uncomfortable Danish chair that was all angles and hardwood. Tom and Joe were across the room on the sofa. She was so conflicted, she remained stuck in this ungodly chair, unsure whether to join in the conjecture or
join in something more real, like cooking gravy or setting the table.
“It makes a difference to them,” Annie said, peeling herself from the vinyl and walking over to the sideboard to grab a handful of forks and napkins. “They want something desperately, the secret of which they protected for nearly one thousand years. They think we are the key, or the roadblock, to them finding what it is they seek: the power to conquer, the power to rule, the power to enshrine Allah as master of this world.” Placing the last fork, she moved alongside Deirdre and took her hand. “No matter how crazy these theories may seem … and this is dime-novel stuff, the one reality we can’t escape is that the Prophet’s Guard will not stop, will not allow one of us to stand in their way, until we are all dead, they are all dead—or they have Aaron’s staff in their hands.”
“I understand all that.” Deirdre shook her massive copper curls. “If, in fact, Jeremiah intended to return the staff to the Tree of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden, the garden was engulfed by the flood of Noah. Then there were thousands of years between the flood and when Jeremiah went to Babylon. How did he know where to look? And there’s another twenty-five hundred years between Jeremiah and today. How could anyone ever expect to find the garden after all these years? I wasn’t totally asleep during my Catholic education, so if anyone could find the garden, what about the angels with the flaming swords?”
Deirdre’s logic was persuasive, but Annie knew there was another element to consider. “If it couldn’t be found, why was Spurgeon so fearful about anyone discovering the sprockets? Why did he say the sprockets were more dangerous than anything discovered before? Look, I don’t think there’s any getting out of this for us. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but if finding this staff is the thing that finally sets us free, then I’m finding that staff.”
Deirdre shook her head, her blue eyes flashing like drawn sabers. “So now what?”
Rizzo emerged from the kitchen, balancing a large bowl of red gravy in his arms. Alarmed, flashing back to Grandma’s dining room at the same time, Annie reached down and took the heavy bowl. She turned to the rest. “Let’s eat while everything is hot. We can save the world after we’re fed.”
Absently tapping his fork against his empty plate, Joe wondered again about his reason for being here on this quest, with these people. Was he really considering the garden of Eden a real place? After all that had happened, what did he really believe? A lapsed Catholic, the object of Deirdre’s constant prayers, Joe never felt out of place in the “born-again” Bohannon family he married into. They loved him for who he was—not the guy who walked away from his faith and the Catholic Church when he went off to college, but a devoted husband and father, a man of character and integrity.
He inspected the back of his fork as his mind slipped back to the dawn of August 25—four days and a world ago. What had he witnessed that morning, other than a desperate and bloody battle on Temple Mount? How could he explain what he felt in his heart—above the fear—when the pillar of fire turned into a pillar of cloud as dawn broke over the smoldering canyon that was once the Mount? How could he reconcile the answers to Tom’s prayers, what seemed like one miracle after another, with the deaths of so many? What was happening? What did it mean? And, why him? Why was he here? He felt a stirring in a place he hadn’t scratched in an age. What if there was more behind Tom’s faith than Joe was willing to accept? What if …
An Irish brogue brought him back to the present.
“These have all been interesting discussions, I must say.” Brandon McDonough looked down the table, past the gravy-splattered plates and the now-empty bowls. “I’ve been both exhilarated and appalled at the glib way in which we have considered marching off to the garden of Eden. It’s an alluring fairy tale, but …”
Rizzo twiddled with a chunk of rigatoni on his otherwise vacant plate. “Putting it that way makes it sound like we’d have a better chance swiping a leprechaun’s gold than finding the staff.”
His head nodding agreement, McDonough pointed his fork at Rizzo. “For once I agree with you, Samuel. But beyond the unlikely nature of success in this endeavor, there is at least one other question that we have failed to consider.”
“Will global warming cook my eggs in the morning? Does a stitch in time really save nine?” Rizzo’s cherubic countenance was trumped by the mischief in his eyes.
“Ummm … excuse me …” McDonough stammered. “What?”
“Skip it, Paddy-boy. What was your question?”
“Well, Samuel, assuming it can be found,” said McDonough, “why take the staff from the garden? If Eden is where it came from, and if it’s been safe there for the last twenty-five hundred years, why move it? Why remove it and bring it … where? Where would it be safe? Jerusalem? London? In a vault somewhere? If Aaron’s staff is, in fact, the most powerful weapon in the history of the world, why bring it out of hiding, from a place no one can find—perhaps no one can enter? It just doesn’t make sense, eh?”
Deirdre got up and started clearing the plates. Annie picked up a bowl and then turned to McDonough.
“I’ve wondered the same thing a couple of times myself,” said Annie, “and I keep coming back to what’s probably the most important point for me. Don’t you think this is the completion of the task … the final step of the calling God’s put on our lives? Finding Aaron’s staff is apparently the root of all that has gone before. Charles Spurgeon finds this mezuzah and sends it to the Bowery Mission, where it sits in a safe for over a hundred years gathering dust and it just happens to be found now?”
That’s what I’m saying, thought Joe. Why now? Why us? A thought helped him find his voice.
“There’s one other consideration.” Joe looked down the table at McDonough. He pulled his hands through his unruly salt-and-pepper hair. “The Temple Guard and Prophet’s Guard have been fighting over this mezuzah for more than a thousand years, trying to complete their understanding of the riddles and clues on the mezuzah and scroll … trying to track down this staff of power. Well, we’ve figured it out—almost, I guess. But let’s assume all this conjecture we’re tossing around is true—that Jeremiah took the staff back to Babylon, looking for the garden. If we can figure it out, why can’t somebody else figure it out? What if the Prophet’s Guard were to find out what we know? What would they do with it … the Muslim Brotherhood? They haven’t given up. Don’t you think it would be a risk if we just gave up?”
Bohannon joined his wife in clearing the table. “Annie’s right about one thing. The Prophet’s Guard isn’t going to let us just walk away from this. I’m beginning to think that, whether we like it or not, we’re involved, and they are going to force us to finish it. I’d rather it be on my terms than theirs.” He looked around the table. “I think we need to go back to the synagogue. We only looked at a small section of the book of Jeremiah this morning. There could be other clues in other parts of the book, in other notations. But remember what the rabbi said to us as we were leaving? Aaron’s staff, with the Ark, could be the weapon of Armageddon, the weapon God uses to destroy all the armies that come to attack Israel. Can we afford to take a chance that weapon falls into the wrong hands? What if the Prophet’s Guard could harness and use the power of Aaron’s staff?”
Tom walked down the table and put his hand on McDonough’s shoulder. “And there’s another thing to consider. What would Doc do? If he were here right now, what would Doc Johnson be telling us we should do? Give up? Go home? Or continue to seek what might be the most amazing archaeological discovery of history?”
11:26 a.m., New York City
“You know, I’m not as much of a Neanderthal as you think,” said Manthey. “I know about Skype.”
Connor Bohannon was adjusting the screen of the laptop to give as wide an angle as possible. “That’s great. How many times have you used it?” He turned away from the screen to glance at Manthey, who stood to his right. The Mission’s CFO held a hand against the bandage on his right side where the Urgent Car
e doctor had sewn a dozen stitches to close the knife wound he’d received in the taxi. The cut was painful, but no longer threatening.
“Use it?” he mumbled. “But I know about it.”
Connor shook his head. “How’s that cut? Can you sit?”
“I may not Skype, but I can sit.”
“Okay … here, sit. Left click on that icon.”
Roberta Smith was at her desk early that morning, waiting for the connection to open. She would have stayed up all night if necessary.
For forty years, Smith had been the driving force behind the Demotic Dictionary Project at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Over those years, many team members had toiled, tarried, and then moved on. But Roberta Smith stayed. This was her passion. This was her baby. And six months ago, she gave birth.
After decades working mostly in relative obscurity, the University of Chicago announced that the Oriental Institute’s Demotic Dictionary Project was complete. Smith’s team had researched each of the twenty-three core Demotic symbols and recorded every one of the possible definitions of each symbol. Their dictionary was massive, over two thousand pages in length.
Because Demotic was a spoken language in Egypt long before anyone ever wrote it down, not only had various dialects developed over the one thousand years it was spoken, but the symbols had also taken on a wide range of disparate definitions depending on the populations speaking it.
So the Demotic symbol that was identified by the letter H—and there were four of them—had over seven hundred pages of symbol variations and explanations, and more than eight thousand different definitions. The least complex symbol, the symbol for F, was recorded with only one hundred definitions over ten pages. By adding the nuances of meaning that emerged from combining two Demotic symbols, it was easy to see a very simple truth.
The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) Page 13