The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)

by Terry Brennan

  “I must go to the service, so please keep notes. If you have questions, my nephew will come to help you read the notations and answer your questions. I don’t know what secret you are hoping to discover, but I wish you good fortune.”

  With that the rabbi pivoted and exited as quickly as he had entered. When he was gone, Tom turned to Annie.

  “Now what? Where do we start? Where do we look for Jeremiah’s secret—the entrance to the garden?”

  A cold current of air passed across the back of Tom’s neck, causing a chill to run down his spine. The room filled with the intoxicating smell of exotic spices, accompanied by the distant sound of bells and trumpets, which segued into a voice.

  “Perhaps I can assist you with your search?”

  To Tom’s right, an audible ooohhh drifted from Annie’s mouth. He could see why. From between the stacks emerged a young man of such extraordinary beauty Bohannon had to look closely to make sure it wasn’t a woman. The young man’s skin was unusually pale, and his bright green eyes were surrounded by waves of black curls. He moved with the grace of a dancer, but the muscles under his shirt belonged to a wrestler.

  “I’ve been sent to help you,” the young man said.

  The rabbi’s nephew looked nothing like him.

  Annie turned toward the book and caressed the page with her gloved hand, running her finger over the beautifully wrought Hebrew letters. “We’re trying to understand more about the notations around the book of Jeremiah.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the young man, his words reverberating under the low ceiling, “but I don’t think we start with Jeremiah. I think we start with Daniel.”

  Bohannon was surprised, and showed it by the quick snap of his head in the young man’s direction. “But Jeremiah—”

  “Yes. Jeremiah is important. But what you may not know is that when Jeremiah arrived in Babylon, about 594 BC, Daniel and the prophet Ezekiel were already in the city, having been taken captive earlier by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem three times; the final time, in 587 BC, he was so enraged by Zedekiah’s rebellion that he decreed the city be completely destroyed. Daniel was one of the Hebrew hostages deported to Babylon the first time in 605.

  “Daniel rose in rank and stature while in captivity and served three Babylonian kings—Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus. He was known by the name Belshazzar and was highly exalted and very powerful in spite of his Hebrew heritage. He rose to the position of chancellor under Nebuchadnezzar, second in power only to the emperor. He knew everything the king knew.”

  The young man’s voice was clear and firm, softly modulated. He could have a career in public speaking.

  “Daniel interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, which helped him rise in the king’s court, but he also had visions himself, three of which were interpreted for Daniel by a man dressed in linen, with a belt of finest gold around his waist—a man identified as the angel Gabriel, who stands in God’s presence. Two points you should know—first, in the first year of Darius, Daniel received a vision of Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian captivity by ‘reading the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet,’ a vision that was interpreted for Daniel by Gabriel. And, second, in the book of Enoch, also in Jewish mythology, even in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Gabriel is identified as the ruler, or governor, over both the garden of Eden and the cherubim who guard its gates.

  “I believe,” said the young man, moving to the table and putting on a pair of gloves, “if you wish to find the entrance to the garden of Eden, you should look first at the Masoretic notes surrounding the book of Daniel.”

  As he turned the pages from Jeremiah, past Lamentations and Ezekiel, Annie came to his side. “How do you know what we’re looking for?” she asked, her eyes narrowed and her voice on edge.

  “I was told. Here, this is what I sought.”

  Tom watched as the young man looked at Annie, so close to his side, with a tenderness that made Tom blush and envious at the same time.

  “May I read to you?” The young man’s voice spun in the air like an invitation to a dance, light and melodic.

  Annie’s eyes questioned, but softened.

  “Here,” said the young man, “in the book of Daniel, is the third time the angel visited with the prophet. Prior to explaining to Daniel what will happen to the Jewish captives in the future—‘a time yet to come’—the man identified as the angel Gabriel says that he was dispatched to Daniel on the first day of Daniel’s prayers, but that he was resisted by the prince of the Persian kingdom for twenty-one days. ‘Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me because I was detained there with the king of Persia.’”

  The young man moved his gloved hand to the top of the page and the notations at the top of the column of letters. “Our learned scholars wrote this as explanation, here at the top of the page and continuing at the bottom:

  The Prince of Persia, and his demonic hordes, resisted Gabriel at the gate of the garden, preventing him from entering the Persian kingdom from the kingdom of G-d. The Prince of Persia stood above the gate of the garden and held the gate for three times seven, until Michael, the chief of G-d’s warriors, joined Gabriel to overcome his power.

  In a “time yet to come,” the man of G-d will answer G-d’s call and stand in the gate of G-d. The way to the garden will be open to him, and he will fulfill the prophecy written here, “But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.”

  Bohannon’s head was spinning, entranced by the young man’s voice and confounded by the words he read. “What does it mean?”

  The young man stepped away from the book and walked to the other side of the table, facing Tom and Annie.

  “In the book of Jeremiah he writes about the things in the Temple of God, ‘For this is what the Lord Almighty says about the pillars, the bronze Sea, the movable stands and the other articles that are left in this city … “They will be taken to Babylon and there they will remain until the day I come for them,” declares the Lord. “Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.”’

  “You are concerned,” he said, “about why God would want to bring Aaron’s staff from the garden, where it has been safeguarded for nearly three thousand years. You are anxious that those who seek its power could capture it.”

  Annie gestured toward the young man. “How do you know these things?”

  The young man placed both hands on the table. “What do you think this has been about from the beginning? If God wants to protect the staff of Aaron for another three thousand years by leaving it in the garden, don’t you think he can do that? Even if men like the Prophet’s Guard or the Muslim Brotherhood think they can find it and use it, is it too much for God to put a stop to their plans? Is his arm too short? And if you bring it out, do you think he is incapable of protecting it in the very world he himself created?”

  The young man turned his attention to Tom and leaned into the table. “But you, man of God, have been called to a task. You don’t understand why. People called by God seldom understand why. But clearly God knows why. And there is a purpose here. Think of all the wisdom, hidden wisdom, that has been imparted to you in the last several months, the codes and secret messages that unfolded before your eyes: Abiathar’s scroll and that journey under Temple Mount to the Third Temple of God; Jeremiah’s long path of clues to the place where he had hidden the Tent of Meeting; discerning the hidden mysteries of the Aleppo Codex and its message about Aaron’s staff. And you found the two, interlocking sprockets with a message that could not have been translated until recently when the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute completed its forty-year project to create a Demotic dictionary.”

  Annie continued to shake her head. “But, wait. Where have you gotten this information?”

  The young man did not slow down.

  “Think of the opposition you have encountered and overcome: ancient, secret societies searching for the same informati
on; incredibly powerful men, organizations, and governments who wanted to stop you; murderous attempts on your lives and the lives of your families.”

  He moved from the far side of the table and approached Tom and Annie. He placed a hand on each of their shoulders and sent a current of warmth along the ridge of Tom’s shoulders. His eyes seemed to refract light from some internal source—peaceful and calming in one respect but bursting with life and promise in another.

  “You, Tom, and your team have traveled over three continents and transcended each of these obstacles. And now you find yourselves in an old Syrian synagogue, in the spiritual center of the world, searching for the staff of power from the hand of God. And after all that has gone before—after all of this—you still wonder if searching for Aaron’s staff is the right thing to do?

  “Then allow me to tell you a story. The Creator of all things placed the stars in the sky before the beginning of time. The planets, the solar systems, the billions of galaxies all move as a perfect celestial clock—you can precisely chart their movements back in time or forward into the future. We look to Daniel, not Jeremiah, because Daniel was a wise man who became a teacher of wise men in Babylon, where a wise man was called a magus. Daniel was the teacher of the magi. It was Daniel who taught the magi to watch for the sign in the sky, the confluence of Jupiter and Venus that formed the brightest star the heavens had ever produced. And it was Daniel who plotted the sky of the Bethlehem Star five hundred years before that night occurred, and used that celestial structure to protect the staff of God until the day God called it forth once more.”

  The young man removed his hand from Annie and put both hands on Tom’s shoulders. The room began to darken at its edges and close in on Tom. He was compelled to keep his gaze locked on the hypnotic green eyes. “Those God calls, Tom, he always equips and enables. God has equipped you to uncover all these secrets and enabled you to understand their meaning. You are, actually, on a mission for God, not from God.

  “God wants the staff found,” he said. “That I know. The staff is a symbol to this world, a reminder of God’s power and his justice. Perhaps Aaron’s staff will turn the people of this world away from those things that glorify man and insult the God who created man.”

  Bohannon felt the chill run down his spine once more, and a sepulchral silence entered the gniza. “I tell you the truth. If that staff still has life, I would fear greatly for this world.” The young man’s words had lost their melody, but developed a razor’s edge. He seemed to have grown in stature. “Pharaoh hardened his heart toward God so many times that God finally hardened Pharaoh’s heart permanently, and look what happened to Egypt: the plagues. What would happen to this world if God turned his patience to wrath? Would he use the same instrument to unleash that wrath? Would he release the same plagues?”

  A shadow crossed Bohannon’s eyes. A dusky haze filled the room as it darkened even more.

  “Why does God want the staff found?” The young man’s voice was a whisper, retreating from Bohannon’s ears. “Is Aaron’s staff to tap into the rock once more and bring forth the spiritual water of revival so that nations will be saved? Or is it to open God’s justice and bring cleansing on the world? Regardless of God’s plan,” he whispered, “this is your task. This is what God has created you to do. And you should allow nothing to stop you.”

  Bohannon fought for clarity of mind and vision.

  “How do you know all this? Who are you?”

  As he removed his hands from Tom’s shoulders, a broad smile crossed the young man’s face and warmed Tom’s soul. “My father calls me Gabriel. My brothers also.”

  “I don’t—”

  Steps fell heavy on the stone stairway leading from the upper floor. Annie and Tom turned for a heartbeat to see Rabbi Asher at the bottom of the steps. “Mr. Bohannon, I promised you—”

  “Rabbi, your nephew Gabriel here …” Tom turned, his left arm swinging in an arc toward the young man.

  But no one was there.

  Bohannon looked down the empty length of the stacked shelves and then at his wife, whose face glowed like the sky before a rising sun. They turned to the rabbi.

  “No, Mr. Bohannon, this is my nephew Gabriel here,” said Rabbi Asher, his hand on the shoulder of a teenager in an ill-fitting black suit. “I told you that I would bring him to you. Now I must get upstairs before the service begins. Gabriel,” he said to the teenager, “please help Mr. and Mrs. Bohannon read the notations in the codex.”

  16

  11:15 p.m., Tehran, Iran

  His private jet landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, well out of the fallout zone, in the middle of the night and was unobstructed as it taxied to the far end of the tarmac, turning into a huge, darkened hangar in the corner farthest from the main terminal. The hangar doors moved with quiet dispatch, closing off all visual access in less than a minute. A phalanx of black, stretch limos with darkened windows were parked in a chevron formation to the left of the now-stationary jet.

  When King Abbudin of Saudi Arabia descended the stairs, the Iranian security agents had no idea which vehicle the king would select. There were seven limos and, before the front door of the airplane swung open, dozens of Saudi guards poured out the back door and surrounded—and searched—each of the vehicles.

  Abbudin was dressed plainly this night, the king wearing a simple white kaftan under an open, dark green robe, a black-checked keffiyeh on his head. His heavy face was dominated by the many-layered, sagging bags under his eyes, the small, pointed beard isolated to the apex of his chin.

  Without hesitation, King Abbudin stepped into the third limo on the right wing of the chevron. Bodyguards and aides scrambled into the other three vehicles on the same wing. Two Cadillac Escalade SUVs stood sentinel at the point of the chevron and began to pull away, gaining speed as they burst from the hangar and crossed the tarmac to a heavily guarded, open gate. As the chevron of limos exited the gate, it split in two, and the wings drove off in opposite directions.

  Tehran’s congested and logic-defying traffic problems were avoided because of the late hour. The convoy raced down the Lashkari Expressway and, instead of turning north to the president’s official residence in the Sa’dabad Palace in Shemiran, turned south toward Shahr Park. Following the Cadillac SUV, the motorcade whizzed past the British and German embassies and turned right onto a small street that backed the Iran National Museum. Turning into a thin driveway flanked by the Islamic Era Museum, the vehicles skirted the fountain in the midst of the formal gardens and pulled up—hidden by trees—at the back of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Abbudin’s bodyguards formed a human shield around their king as he stepped from the limo. This tight knot of security moved silently to the rear entrance of the ministry building, but turned left, down a short flight of steps to an underground level. Once through a heavy, vault-like door, most of the security squad pulled away to man surveillance locations while two of his most trusted guardians accompanied the king down a long, sloping hallway, deeper into the bowels of the building. At the far end, two French doors opened. Standing in the doorway was the supreme leader.

  “As-salaam alaikum,” said Abbudin, a nod of his head acknowledging his host, “and Allah’s mercy and blessings.”

  “Wa-alaikum salaam, my brother, the same to you. It is an honor to have you under our roof.” Imam Ayatollah Ali Ghorbani, the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah in 1979, looked much like his predecessor—old, bespectacled, a full, long white beard covering a third of his face, a large black sarband on his head. Like his mentor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini before him, Ali Ghorbani was one of the Shi’a clerics who helped design the Iranian theocracy, a fundamentalist Islamic state effectively ruled by the self-appointed Assembly of Experts, which selected the supreme leader. “I apologize for the clandestine nature of your arrival, but even here in Tehran, we have become victims of traitors and Zionist aggression. Let me assure you, we
are safe here. We are upwind of the radiation, and this bunker is secure. Come, let us rest.”

  His right arm nearly destroyed by an assassination attempt in 1981, when a bomb concealed in a tape recorder at a press conference exploded beside him, Ghorbani extended his left hand and escorted King Abbudin farther into the depths of the foreign ministry building.

  “It is good of you to come to Tehran,” Ghorbani said as they walked along the corridor and turned into a comfortable sitting room. “I must admit I was a bit surprised when I received your request.”

  Ghorbani led Abbudin toward two facing, upholstered chairs flanking a small, round table. Above them hung a life-size portrait of the late supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. The portrait was their only companion as their aides and bodyguards wasted no time leaving the room.

  Abbudin, understanding the risk he took by asking for this meeting, didn’t waste any time, either.

  “Your Excellency, I come to you tonight as a tangible assertion of my solidarity with you and your countrymen at this time and to offer you the support of the Saudi people. I only ask that you and I put aside for the moment the many things that divide us and allow me to speak of the more important things that unite us.”

  Ghorbani sat back into the softness of the chair, his eyes never leaving Abbudin’s face. The Saudi king knew this was the pivotal moment.

  The supreme leader’s voice was welcoming, his Arabic—in place of his native Farsi—was perfect, but his words carried the sting of truth. “By those things that divide us, do you mean the funds and arms you are currently supplying to the Sunni terrorists who are trying to overthrow the legitimate government of my Shi’a brother Baqir Al-Musawi in Syria? Or do you mean the American warplanes you permit to be based on the Saudi peninsula? Or do you mean the recent assassination of the Imam Moussa al-Sadr, father of Hezbollah, at the hands of one of your sons?”