The Brotherhood Conspiracy

by Brennan, Terry

  The Temple? Johnson’s petulance began to ebb.

  “It has other meanings, too. The Triple Tau has also been translated to mean a key to a treasure . . . or . . . a place where a precious thing is concealed . . . or . . . the precious thing itself.”

  Johnson’s heart felt like the strumming of a twelve-string guitar, his animosity for Silver vanishing with each word from his mouth.

  “Sadly, this symbol has been hijacked and corrupted from its original meaning.” Silver turned to his two guests, leaving the mezuzah on the desk. “Back in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, when Free Masonry got its start, the Masons adopted the Triple Tau, enclosed in a triangle and surrounded by a circle, as a sacred symbol of progression. Then”—Silver shook his head—“the Ku Klux Klan took the symbol of the Triple Tau and used it as the central symbol on the Klan’s flag.”

  “Aye, that’s mad,” said McDonough. “From the divine to the profane. Such a sad report.”

  “Yeah . . . but what interests us is its original meaning—the Temple in Jerusalem,” said Silver, “particularly in light of this other set of symbols separating it. If Abiathar, a priest of the Hebrews, was behind these etchings and he was sending it to his peer in Egypt, then this third set . . . the four arches . . . most likely represents wilderness. The four arches are hieroglyphic symbols—four tens—meaning the number forty. To a Hebrew priest, forty means wilderness. Israel was tested for forty years in the wilderness. Jonah preached judgment to Nineveh—spiritually a wilderness—for forty years. If you consider that the Triple Tau can not only represent the Temple, but could also mean a place where a precious thing is concealed, then I think there is a high level of probability that this series of symbols on the outside of this mezuzah . . . the Triple Tau and the four arches . . . is attempting to communicate that the Temple is in the wilderness.”

  “No . . . it must be the Tent,” said Johnson, jumping into the conversation in spite of his bruised ego. “Abiathar knew where the Temple he built was hidden, under the Temple Mount. He must have been giving Meborak a second message, that the Tent is in the wilderness. But where? Joshua, do the other symbols help us?”

  Silver shook his mangy head, picked up the mezuzah, and held it out in front of him. “That’s what I was saying before. I thought I saw something on that rubbing and I just confirmed it when I examined the mezuzah. I don’t believe all of these symbols are from your boy Abiathar.

  “Look, between the sets of Triple Taus is the fifth symbol set—a budding staff and a scorpion. The budding staff is the symbol of the Aaronic priesthood, right? The scorpion—well, I’ve got to admit I simply don’t know. Could be anything, but those symbols go with the first four sets. But, what is most interesting is this. Here . . . rub your finger over this line of symbols—the sixth set, a single tau and a palm tree, repeated three times.”

  Silver held the mezuzah out to Johnson as if it were a peace offering, sweeping the last of Doc’s reluctance into the past. Johnson closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the etched surface. When he reached the single tau, his breathing skipped a beat. “It’s different,” he whispered, almost to himself. “The symbols . . . they feel different. There’s a different edge to them.”

  “That’s because they were made by different tools . . . at different times,” said Silver. He picked up the magnifying glass. “Look, you can see the rougher edges on the single tau and the palm symbol. I felt it right away when you handed it to me. All the other etchings on the mezuzah were done with a smaller tool. Everything was polished to smooth edges. Except the sixth series, the single tau and palm tree images. They were added later.”

  With a quick step to Johnson’s side, McDonough put his hand on Doc’s shoulder. “Ah, that’s it, then, isn’t it,” he said. “Fantastic!”

  Johnson stepped back, the mezuzah still resting gently in his hands.

  “It was lost,” he said as he looked from McDonough to Silver. “The mezuzah and scroll probably never made it to Meborak. Somewhere in transit it was lost, and it remained lost for seven hundred fifty years until it popped into Charles Spurgeon’s hands in Alexandria in the late nineteenth century. You’re saying that whoever was hiding the mezuzah, wherever it was, added the single tau and the palm?”

  Silver stepped over to Johnson with a big grin on his face and wrapped his right arm around Doc’s shoulders. “Now it’s payback time, Richard.” Johnson stiffened. “I know where it was . . . and I know what those symbols mean.”

  Before a word could escape from Johnson’s stunned lips, Josh Silver half-carried him to a case in the middle of the corridor while speaking over his shoulder to McDonough. “The tau represents many things, Brandon, but the tau and the palm tree together reminded me of something. For centuries, and in many places still today, the tau is called Saint Anthony’s cross. Here . . . look.”

  Silver released Johnson from his grasp, made room for McDonough, and the three men gazed into a large, dimly illuminated glass case. It was a desert exhibit, a cave entrance constructed against the left wall, artifacts scattered on a sandy floor and—dominating the center of the exhibit—a large, three-dimensional picture of an emaciated, brown-robed man with a scraggily, white beard reaching down to his waist.

  “This is Saint Anthony the Great,” said Silver. “An Egyptian, a Coptic Christian, known as the father of monasticism . . .”

  “A Coptic?” blurted Johnson, his eyes opening wide as he pored over the three-dimensional image.

  Silver gave Johnson a quizzical look before continuing. “Yeah . . . a Coptic Christian. They were the majority in Egypt at the time. Saint Anthony was the first ascetic monk to go into the wilderness and live most of his life as a hermit, living first in a cave, then locked into the ruins of a Roman fort. When he died, in 356 Common Era, a monastery was built above his burial site. It’s still there at the base of the al-Qalzam Mountains in Egypt, surrounding the huge al-Quiddis oasis. And it’s still a monastery, the longest occupied monastery in the world.

  “The tau became known as Saint Anthony’s cross later in the tenth century and was worn as an emblem on the tunics of the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony. There was an illness called Saint Anthony’s fire—a condition caused by eating rye or barley contaminated with a fungus. The disease caused convulsions and gangrene—eventually eating away its victims. It got its name because several monks of the Order of Saint Anthony were successful in treating the ailment.”

  “Joshua . . . what does all this have to do with the mezuzah?” Johnson said, trying to suppress his impatience.

  “Look over at the right wall. See that drawing? It’s a copy of a Coptic icon depicting Saint Anthony in the desert with several other images around him. On the left he’s meeting with Saint Paul. On the right are several classic Egyptian symbols . . . the flying trident, the three fans, and the flanking lions. But look at the symbol above the lions . . . the markings that are inside that cartouche.”

  Johnson looked at the drawing, then down at the mezuzah in his hands. “They’re the same,” he said. “It’s the same symbol, the tau and the palm tree.”

  Josh Silver turned away from Johnson to face the other two scientists.

  “Richard, I don’t know where the Tent of Meeting may be hidden, or if it even exists. There are other symbols on the mezuzah—vines, flowers, a lion, a lamb—I have no idea what they mean or if they are even connected. There’s nothing obvious, and nothing in my experience, that would connect those other symbols to what we’ve already found.

  “But one thing I do know. Wherever that mezuzah ended up, it spent time at the Monastery of St. Anthony. That cartouche, with those symbols,” he pointed over his shoulder, “is carved into the stone over the doorway to the monastery’s library. If you’re looking for the Tent . . . the Temple hidden in the wilderness . . . I think you have to start looking in Egypt.”

  THE PRESENT

  New York City

  His story completed, Johnson stretched again, pulling out Rodri
guez’s chair from behind the desk and planting himself in its ergonomic cocoon. He leaned forward in the chair and rested his elbows against the desk.

  “I’ll tell you what I think. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Dr. Silver was right. Abiathar etched—or had someone etch—the outside of the mezuzah with everything except these three pairs of symbols, the single tau and the palm tree. I think he was telling us—anyone who looked—that he knew where the Tent was hidden. That’s why he etched the word mishkan inside that structure under the lion. The home for the Lion of Judah. The home for his God. But somebody else etched in the single tau and the palm tree.”

  Johnson pointed across the desk. “Brandon, to bring you up to speed, it appears the mezuzah, and the scroll that was inside it, were kept in a locked room in the Bibliotheca Historique de L’Egypte in Suez from sometime in the eleventh century until sometime in the nineteenth century. At first, the room was the private domain of a small group of men—Coptic Christians of Egypt—who called themselves the Temple Guard. Then, about two hundred years ago, there was some violent overthrow. A new group—Muslims this time—calling themselves the Prophet’s Guard, wrested control of the room and the scroll from the Coptics. Not long afterward, the mezuzah and scroll disappeared from the locked room . . . called the Scroll Room . . . and, for a time, the Prophet’s Guard appeared to vanish.”

  Johnson slid from the chair, moved behind the desk to a large map of the Middle East that Rodriguez had pinned to corkboard. With his finger on Suez, Doc turned toward Bohannon. “Tom, do you know where Taphanes, the city that Jeremiah and the exiles escaped to, is located? Here”—he inched his finger up—“along the Suez River, just north of Suez. And, right here, just south of Suez, at the foot of Al-Qalzam mountain range, is St. Anthony’s Monastery.” Doc rested his hand on the map. His hand and fingers more than covered all the land from Taphanes in the north to the monastery in the south. “Pretty close together, right?”

  Johnson bowed his head and ran the fingers of both hands through the long, silver curls that flowed like rapids around the nape of his neck and over his shirt collar. When he turned to face the room, Tom saw weary resignation in his eyes.

  “Gentlemen, if the president of the United States truly wants us to find the Tent of Meeting . . . if such a thing even exists . . . then I think we have to consider a certain confluence of evidence. Jeremiah is the last person reported in possession of the Tent. Jeremiah escaped to Egypt with Jewish exiles who were fleeing Nebuchadnezzar’s army. Abiathar’s mezuzah was sent to Egypt with a message—a message that appears to have failed to reach his coconspirator, Meborak. The mezuzah we found has what appears to be a newer set of markings including the symbol of the tau, the symbol of Saint Anthony’s cross. St. Anthony’s Monastery is close to Suez—the home of the Prophet’s Guard—where our mezuzah and scroll were either hidden or protected for over seven hundred years in the Bibliotheca de L’Egypt. Correct me if I’m wrong, Brandon, but my experience tells me that if I’m looking for a clue to the location of the Tent of Meeting, perhaps a good place to search would be the Monastery of St. Anthony.”

  “So, is that it, then?” blustered McDonough. “Tripoli, Mount Nebo, and a monastery in the middle of the desert? Just hold onto your britches. If we’re talking about Jeremiah being a catalyst in this search for the Tent of Meeting, then I believe there is an entirely different path we may need to follow in looking for clues to the Tent’s ultimate destination.”

  Brandon McDonough’s round, jovial face and Irish brogue were as warm as the glowing bed of a peat fire. Under his academic tweeds there was little evidence of the Belfast boy from Bogside who survived bombings along the Shankill Road and who fought his way out of “the Troubles”—the religious guerrilla war spawned by four centuries of English occupation of the Irish nation.

  His smile was as big as the tales he told, but there was a steely resolve under the good-natured veneer—the determination of a man who refused to accept “you never can” as a determinate of his future. McDonough was a formidable apologist. And he wasn’t prepared to give any ground.

  “In Jeremiah’s day, after Nebuchadnezzar crushed Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, a group of rebels—or patriots, depending on who’s telling the tale—scooped up Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, in their fleeing band. Their number also included Zedekiah’s daughters, including the princess Tamar, or Tephi, and her handmaidens . . . clearly an attempt at securing and continuing the royal line of Judah. And this whole motley crew headed to Egypt and the promised protection of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Hophra.

  “The exiles from Judah settled in the city of Taphanes, but Jeremiah prophesied that God’s wrath—in the form of Nebuchadnezzar’s armies—would find the Jews in Egypt. In other words, it was time to leave.

  “From biblical history, that’s the last we hear of Jeremiah,” said McDonough. “But not from recorded history. There are many historians who claim ancient writings prove Jeremiah not only left Egypt, but that he also sailed—along with Baruch, the princess Tephi, and her servants—first to Gibraltar and then to the most beautiful place on earth.”

  “So Jeremiah ended up in California?” asked Rizzo.

  “Ah, not exactly California,” said McDonough. “No, Jeremiah sailed to Ireland. And Zedekiah’s daughter, Tephi, married the king of Ireland.”

  “And I’m the queen of the fairies,” snapped Rizzo. “Have you been hitting the sauce? Next you’re going to tell us that Jeremiah ended up sharing an apartment with Saint Patrick and Santa Claus and a couple of leprechauns with a pot of gold.”

  McDonough crossed the room to the whiteboard and, taking a marking pen from Rodriguez, added a fourth column and labeled it Ireland.

  “This is no fairy tale, Samuel,” he said, turning back to the room. “It’s the stuff of legend and lore, most certainly. But there is enough legend, and enough support to those legends, that we need to take this possibility seriously. Look,” McDonough said, swinging his right arm to include them all, “you really don’t have much hope of finding the Tent of Meeting, no matter what you do. But, if you are seriously going to consider the first three as possibilities, then you’ve also got to at least consider this possibility . . . particularly when you look at all the evidence linking Ireland, Egypt, and Israel.”

  In spite of himself, Bohannon was intrigued by McDonough’s story. “What kind of evidence?” he asked. “We might as well listen.”

  McDonough scanned the faces of his audience, nodded his head, and perched himself on the corner of Joe Rodriguez’s desk.

  “According to ancient lore, many believe the lost tribe of Dan—one of the twelve tribes of Israel—also settled on the Emerald Isle. The Psalter of Cashel, an ancient book of Irish history, states that the Tuatha de Danaan ruled in Ireland for about two centuries, and they were also said to have possessed a grail-like vessel.

  “The kings of Ireland were called Ardagh. That’s a Hebrew word—Ard, meaning commander and Dath meaning laws or customs . . . the commander of the laws. And, up until the time of Saint Patrick, the law of Ireland was identified as the Law of Moses.”

  Silence hovered in Rodriguez’s office, wrestling with the lingering aroma of stale coffee. No one challenged McDonough’s theory, perhaps because they didn’t know him well enough to skewer him. It was Doc Johnson who pounced first.

  “Now, Brandon, you’re talking about an incredible leap here. Do you really think there’s a connection between Jeremiah, Abiathar, and the Irish? The Tuatha De Danaan, they invaded Ireland, what, seven hundred years before Christ?”

  “More.”

  “So, there’s at least fifteen centuries, an ocean, and a continent between the Tuatha Da Danaan and Abiathar,” said Doc. “Jeremiah in Ireland . . . seems to me you are desperately grasping at straws. Do you really think we should be putting our faith in myths and legends?”

  “Aye, you are most certainly correct,” said McDonough, with a twitch in his eyebrows and a twinkle in his ey
e. “Exceptin’ that it may not be so much myth and legend, after all.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Sure, now, I wouldn’t want to be takin’ you on a fairy hunt,” said McDonough, “and I would chalk it up to a wee tendency to exaggerate, for which the Irish are famous, except for three very fascinating facts.”

  McDonough looked around the room at the expectant faces and allowed the pause to lengthen into silence.

  “Jeepers creepers, Saint Patrick,” snapped Rizzo. “Spill it, will ya?”

  McDonough rubbed the side of his nose and a chuckle tumbled from the corners of his lips. “Richard, I know you have some experience with the Elephantine Papyri, is that not so?”

  “Yes . . . yes,” Johnson grumbled. “What of it?”

  “Well, I’ve taken a trip to Brooklyn,” said McDonough.

  Johnson sat bolt upright in his chair as a self-righteous smile spread from Brandon McDonough’s toes to his teeth. “Wilbour’s treasure?” Johnson whispered.

  “Aye . . . yes, Richard.” McDonough leaned back against the desk, taking them all in. “Charles Edwin Wilbour was a very unique individual—a linguist, a reporter, and a lawyer, he was tarnished through some scandal involving Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed. In 1871 he went into self-exile in Paris and studied to become the first trained American Egyptologist.

  “But Wilbour is best remembered for a remarkable purchase he made in 1893 on one of his many trips up the Nile. During a stop at Aswan, he bought a group of papyrus documents that were dug up on the Nile island of Elephantine by the locals. Wilbour died three years later. The Paris hotel where he lived packed all his belongings into a trunk and stuck the trunk in its attic, where it remained for the next twenty years. When Wilbour’s possessions were finally returned to his family in 1916 they were donated to the Brooklyn Museum where it was discovered that his purchase was the first of three discoveries of what has come to be known as the Elephantine Papyri. These documents, written in Aramaic I might add, record much of the history of a Jewish community which lived in Egypt, even built their own, small temple, from the fifth century before Christ.”