by John Lyman
“This is all very strange,” Morelli said. “Something’s not right.”
Lev lit a match and fired up his cigar. “What’s on your mind, Bishop?”
“Well, the only thing I’ve ever experienced in the psychic realm was the group dreams we were all experiencing last year ... which by the way have stopped. Has anyone else noticed?”
Morelli had nailed it. No one had mentioned it, but the group dreams that had come to those who had been mentioned as chosen in the Bible code had all stopped. Before, when they had all been facing a supernatural threat, it was the group dreams that had united them, making it possible to identify one another as members of the same team so to speak. But where the dreams had once been a unifying force, there was now a gaping silence, and it was making them feel vulnerable.
Mulling Morelli’s words over in his mind, Leo continued staring at the screen. “I believe we need to have a look at that cave, and we need to do it soon.”
“Do you know how to ride a motorbike, Cardinal?” Lev asked.
“That’s how I get around Rome ... much to the dismay of the pope.”
“Good. Let’s all meet down on the dock in fifteen minutes.”
* *
Under the intense rays of the sun, the group wove through the dense traffic in the port town of Skala before heading up into the surrounding hills on their tiny, multi-colored motor scooters. Curving through the center of the island, the warm, salty air brushed Leo’s face as they sped past a Greek restaurant and inhaled the aroma of garlic-and-lemon-infused cooking flowing from the exhaust fans at the side of the building. Leo’s stomach groaned with hunger, and as they headed up the hill toward the promise of a sweaty afternoon digging in the dirt, he found himself wishing that he was here on vacation with Evita instead.
Holding onto the handlebars of the tiny scooter, he missed her arms wrapped around him and imagined them stopping together at that little café he had just passed, where they could sit outside under the blue-and-white-striped awning with a glass of wine, enjoying the sea breeze as they tried out new dishes. Maybe someday he would be able to live like everyone else, but today was not that day.
Reaching the top of the hill, they passed the monastery built over the cave where John had written the Book of Revelation. Thoughts of Evita continued to flood his mind, but he had to force himself to stay focused— to keep reminding himself that this was no island joy ride. Why was this proving to be so difficult for him? Deep down inside, Cardinal Leopold Amodeo felt lost, and he had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Coming here had been necessary, but he was convinced the real truth lay back in Turkey— in the hills surrounding that village with the dusty streets and lopsided houses. Things definitely weren’t right back there in that place.
Rounding a long curve at the bottom of the hill, Alon turned off the road onto a dirt trail and headed toward a wall of solid brush that fronted several large boulders at the base of the hill. Throttling the engine of the small motor scooter, Leo could see that they were following a narrow donkey path that had probably been here since the time John had lived among these hills as an old man; when Patmos had once been a place of banishment during the Roman period instead of a place for tourists to sip their wine under striped awnings on lazy, sun-filled afternoons.
At the bottom of a cliff, they stopped in a shady hollow and parked their scooters before setting out for the cave. Alon and Nava led the way, followed by Lev, John and Ariella, Leo, and Bishop Morelli. Bringing up the rear was Javier Mendoza, who had forced them to wait another twenty minutes back in town while the Carmela’s crew lowered another scooter to the dock because his Spanish pride would not allow him to ride sitting behind another man on one of the tiny vehicles.
Pushing through the thick brush, they followed a rocky incline that turned sharply to the left, revealing the darkened entrance to a cave that had probably remained hidden for centuries. Forging ahead, Alon switched on a light attached to a headband and plunged into the darkness.
The cave was slightly larger than Leo had been led to believe, with tall, drippy-looking ceilings hanging over a smooth dirt floor that looked as if it had been swept clean every day, although judging by the amount of brush they had found covering the entrance, the thought that someone was actually taking care of the cave seemed a remote possibility. Above their heads they saw soot marks on the ceiling, indicating that the cave had once been inhabited, but according to Morelli, the stains were at least a thousand years old, if not older.
“Well, where do we start?” Leo asked. He was feeling uncharacteristically impatient, and although the temperature inside the cave was cooler than outside, he was already beginning to perspire. As a former tenured professor of history at Boston College before his sudden rise within the Church, he understood Morelli’s love for archaeology, but Leo disliked field work, preferring instead to haunt ancient libraries in search of long-forgotten wisdom rather than dig in the earth for old pottery shards, a term he had used to describe most of Morelli’s finds.
Scanning the walls, Morelli lifted his floppy canvas hat and ran a pudgy hand through a patch of thinning red hair. “You were right, Ariella. There’s no evidence of writing on these walls. I imagine this cave was once used by sheep herders when the weather was bad, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of habitation by people who predate the history of writing. There’s no painted handprints or drawings of animals, which were very popular to many cave dwellers in this area of the world. This is a strange cave ... it’s almost too clean.”
John dropped his backpack and studied the soft dirt floor. “Should we start digging down along the walls Bishop?”
“That would be my suggestion, but be very careful. If there’s anything here it’s been covered over by the sands of time and we don’t want to destroy anything with our digging.”
Grabbing a shovel, Alon went to work along the north wall, and soon everyone else was digging away, trying to be as careful as possible to prevent the blades of their shovels from scraping any writing they might find on the walls. Two hours later, the sweaty group was looking at a narrow trench that had been dug three feet down into the dirt along the twisting rock walls. There was nothing there.
“I just don’t get it,” Lev said. “I’m sure the numbers we discovered in the code were coordinates, and they led us right here ... to this very spot. There’s got to be something here.”
“Well, I’m not seeing it, Father,” Ariella said, leaving a dirt-tinged trail of sweat across her forehead as she pushed the hair out of her eyes. “Maybe we can get some graduate students back at the University in Jerusalem to do a complete excavation while we all go to the site in Turkey. They could call us if they find anything.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Morelli said. “We could kill two birds with one stone. We need to find what Eduardo was looking for in Turkey instead of poking around a cave here on Patmos. I have a feeling there’s a time element to all of this, and now that Eduardo’s out of commission, I feel an even greater urgency.”
“I agree with your premise, Anthony,” Leo said, “but I still think there’s something here ... something that could very well help us in Turkey. I’d hate to walk away with the answer lying right beneath our feet.”
Lev leaned on his shovel. “Leo’s right. This is too important to leave to a bunch of graduate students. We have to keep digging.”
Lifting themselves to their feet, they all began to dig again. For another hour, as sweat poured into their eyes, they kept digging, until the muffled clunk of Alon’s shovel against something solid caused them to stop.
“What was that?” Ariella asked.
“Probably another rock,” Alon said, peering down into the dusty trench. “I’ve been hitting them all day.”
Morelli peered into the hole. “Didn’t sound like a rock.”
Crowding around behind Alon, they all stared down at the spot in silence. Archaeologists everywhere knew that clunks in the earth usually meant n
othing at all—but what if? Most were all treasure hunters at heart, driven by the hope that something old and wonderful was lying just beneath their feet.
Slowly, Morelli and Ariella took over, digging down carefully with hand spades until they could just make out the fractured outline of a clay jar.
“Definitely not a rock,” Morelli said, his eyes suddenly gleaming.
They continued on, brushing away the dirt with a painter’s brush until finally an entire clay jar lay exposed in the hard-packed earth.
After a few final brush strokes, Ariella could see that the opening in the neck of the jar had been sealed with wax. Slowly, with hands all around, they lifted the jar from the spot where it had probably been lying for almost two thousand years and set it on the dirt floor.
“This is wonderful!” Morelli exclaimed. “It’s beyond my wildest dreams ... much better than any writing found on a wall.”
“Don’t get too excited, Bishop,” Alon said. “Those sheep herders you were talking about might have just left a jar of wine behind.”
“No. The fracture lines are clean. There’s no staining to indicate that there was ever any wine in this jar. Ordinarily, I would take this jar back to the ship and spend days opening it up, but we don’t have the time.”
Pulling out a pocket knife, Morelli winced, for he was about to go against everything he had ever been taught as an archaeologist. He was preparing to violate an ancient artifact with a pocket knife—an act that placed him in the same category with those who desecrated ancient sites for profit. Working as carefully as he could, he cut around the edges of the wax and gently lifted the crumbling plug from the mouth of the jar. When he was finished, he bent down on both knees and shined a flashlight inside before letting out a gasp.
“What is it?” Ariella asked. Her eyes were as wide as anyone had ever seen them.
“You won’t believe this.” Morelli sat up and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “It’s a scroll!”
The cave seemed to breathe as nine sets of lungs exhaled in unison. “We’ve got to be very careful,” Morelli said, hovering over the jar, for he knew his next decision could well decide if the scroll would remain intact or become an unrecognizable pile of dust on the cave floor.
Working methodically, he inched the blade of his pocket knife into the fractured side of the jar and, with Ariella’s help, they lifted out the largest piece of broken clay, exposing the scroll. On first inspection, it appeared to be made from cloth and not from papyrus, which was more malleable but less strong. Holding his breath, Morelli felt lightheaded. Perspiration began to drip from his forehead and his hands began to shake as he reached down and prodded an object that hadn’t been exposed to air for almost two thousand years. It felt soft, not hard, which was good, and it had never been tied, which was even better.
Lifting it out, he laid it on the soft sand and carefully began to roll it open. Once again the cave seemed to come alive and breathe on its own when everyone let out a collective gasp. Morelli’s eyes widened as he made the sign of the cross, for they were looking at the unmistakable image of a jackal lying on a crude stone floor surrounded by towering columns of stone. The jackal appeared to be lying in a pool of blood that was oozing from an open incision in the animal’s womb—like a caesarian section, and rising out of the jackal’s open ribcage, two identical black snakes could be seen slithering from the bloody incision.
A sudden shiver ran down Ariella’s spine as she looked down at the image. “That’s truly grotesque. What do you think it means?”
Pushing in next to his daughter, Lev ran his trembling hands over the cloth and closed his eyes as a vision formed in his mind. “Rene and Adrian.” He blurted the two names out, as if he couldn’t say them fast enough.
“What did you say, Father?”
“The two snakes represent Rene and Adrian Acerbi. This is a depiction of their birth.”
John’s eyes were now as wide as Ariella’s. “I don’t understand. I mean ... how do you know?”
“Across the top of the page we decoded in Genesis, we found the words birthplace and mother of the two. This scroll was left to us as a sign ... the cave of the sign. It’s the depiction of an unnatural birth occurring within a circle of stone monoliths, and Eduardo was excavating a site full of stone monoliths in Turkey. It’s the birthplace of his two adopted sons, and whoever left this scroll here knew exactly where that birthplace was and who was born there.”
“But why leave the scroll hidden here?”
“All I can say at this point is that this area is filled with prophetic messages from the past, and they may have been left for those of us who are living now, in what could well be the end times. Remember, the code is like a time lock. It reveals certain things at certain times. We may not be having group dreams like we did in the past, but we’re still God’s chosen ones, and this was left for us. I’m sure of it. The only question is, why?”
Ariella began to feel real fear take hold of her as she stood and looked at her father. “Their mother was a jackal? I’m sorry, Father, but I’m having a hard time believing any of this. It’s like a bad movie.”
“I don’t blame you, little one, but just like in the Negev Desert, I have a feeling we’re being led, and time is growing short.”
“And I have a feeling we need to get back to Turkey as soon as possible,” Leo said, turning away from the image of the dead jackal and the two snakes. He stumbled out into the sunshine and sat on a rock. Now at least they had something to go on, but if the two boys were born at some mysterious site in Turkey, what was the reason? And even more importantly—where did they come from?
CHAPTER 12
After making an overnight passage across the Adriatic Sea, the Carmela slid past the fabled island of Rhodes into the Mediterranean and glided into the picturesque yacht harbor in Antakya. Better known in ancient times as Antioch, the city held great historical significance for the Christian world, for it was here that the followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians. An old cave-church in the city was known as Saint Peter’s grotto, and even though it had been Saint Luke who had started it, it was named after Peter because it had once served as his headquarters during the early days of the Church.
Located in a valley surrounded by mountains that produced some of the finest green marble in the world, the city was founded in 330 BC after the death of Alexander the Great. Because of its strategic location on the way to the Holy Land, Antioch soon became the third largest city in the Roman Empire and played a major role later on during the Crusades before falling into a state of decline after a series of devastating earthquakes.
Today the city is known to many throughout the region as a place of spells, miracles, and spirits; a sign to some of the members of the Bible Code Team that they had once again been thrust into a milieu of intrigue surrounded by a dark mystery—a mystery that could very well determine the fate of every living soul on the planet.
From the bridge, the yacht’s captain spotted Dr. Diaz. He was standing in front of a yellow school bus on the dock next to a curly-haired man, and they were waving at him. Tossing his lit cigarette overboard, he turned and walked back into the wheelhouse and down to the communications room.
“Were you guys expecting a school bus?”
Leo and Lev looked up from their computer screens with blank stares. “No. Abbas was supposed to pick us up in the Suburban.”
Alex shrugged. “Well, you two might want to come topside and see this for yourselves.”
Stepping out onto the main deck, they found both Diaz and Abbas collapsed in deck chairs.
“My SUV broke down five miles out of town,” Abbas said. “Can we have some water?” The man was practically panting as Lev motioned to a crewmember behind the bar. By now Morelli and Mendoza had joined them as Diaz wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that was already soaked. “We walked for miles in the heat until the driver of that school bus stopped and gave us a ride.”
&n
bsp; “Where did he go?” Lev asked.
“We gave him a hundred bucks,” Diaz said, “He’s calling his wife from the harbormaster’s office to tell her of his good fortune.”
Abbas finished downing his second glass of ice water and set the glass on the table. “I can’t believe it. That vehicle is practically brand new. I had it checked out before we left Istanbul ... like I always do before a long trip. The mechanic changed the oil and said everything was working perfectly. It’s being towed to a mechanic’s shop here in town, but there’s no telling when it will be fixed.”
Looking out over the harbor, Leo’s green eyes followed the outline of the shore to the mountains in the distance. He shivered with the thought that something out there had sensed their arrival. He could almost feel the energy. It was pulsating and throbbing—growing stronger the closer they got, and as any student of physics can tell you, no force wants to be stopped. Whatever force lay within the Dark Ruin was not only strong, but it was also resistant to change. It was obdurate ... a stubborn obstacle to anyone who would try to alter its course, a course that had been set at the dawn of mankind.
In Leo’s mind, there was no doubt that the force they were facing was evil, and that any attempt to alter its course would be as fruitless as trying to sandbag a raging river that was already cresting its banks. Like the force of unleashed water that washes away the rich, loamy topsoil that was created by an unrestrained flood sometime in the past, evil builds and evil destroys, and it always stands in the way of those trying to alter its course. It hums and vibrates to those who are attuned to it, and Cardinal Leopold Amodeo was feeling the vibration of a darkening power that was deeper than any he had ever experienced before, and it had sensed their presence.
“What do you want to do, Leo?” Lev asked, shaking the cardinal from his reverie. “We don’t have time to wait for the car to be fixed. Sanliurfa is only a little over a hundred miles from here. Maybe we should take the chopper.”