Jerusalem
Joe Rordiguez left the Old City by the New Gate and turned toward the honking chaos and exhaust poison of Suleiman Road, which skirts the city on the northeast. As he passed the C-shaped stairs down to the Damascus Gate, a tour bus squeezed by on his left, skirting the earthquake damage that still pockmarked the road. A seemingly endless human tide streamed through the Damascus Gate and were greeted by the competing shouts of street hawkers who lined both sides of the stairs.
A hundred yards down the hill he came upon the doorway to Solomon’s Quarries, a huge cave at least two football fields long that sloped to the south, toward the Temple Mount. Discovered in 1852 and considered to be the source for the stone used to build the temple area, little is known about the cavern except that several huge, half-hewn blocks of limestone litter the floor and the walls show clear evidence of quarrying. But Rodriguez wasn’t interested in the quarry.
Across Suleiman Road, at the end of a short alley and cut out of the rock, he could see the dark indentation of an entrance that ran under the far hill, a cavern known as Jeremiah’s Grotto—the place where Jeremiah was imprisoned by King Zedekiah and where, according to legend, the prophet wrote the book of Lamentations.
From the shadowed doorway to Solomon’s Quarries Rodriguez appeared to be scanning a Jerusalem tourist guide. In spite of the long bus ride from Tripoli, that drained the energy from his body, Joe kept close watch on the gate at the far end of the alley. The sun was hard to the west, casting long shadows across the street, but heat still pounded off the asphalt, sucking the moisture out of his skin and driving most tourists to the air-conditioned indoors. Pedestrians were primarily locals, most in kaftans of many colors, who threaded their way through crates of fruits and vegetables. Joe considered each one a suspicious threat. No one approached the grotto.
Joe’s self-preservation clicked in enough that he looked up and down the street for a careening vehicle. There was no wheeled threat, so he crossed Suleiman Road and entered into the cool darkness of the grotto’s entrance.
To the left of the entrance, protected from the sun in deep shadow, a man—his yarmulke-covered head resting on his arms atop a battered wooden desk—slept loudly, his snores echoing down the cavern.
Joe stopped for a moment and debated. It wasn’t a question of ducking the ten-shekel admission. He felt his investigation might go more smoothly—alone. Eyes adjusting to the dim light, Joe felt like a kid stealing candy as he skulked deeper into the grotto.
The space was larger than it appeared from the outside. It was a wide, square cavern with a high ceiling and several ancient, wooden doors exiting to the north of the main cave. The air was stale, heavy, and smelled of chalk dust. Joe pulled a compact flashlight from his pocket and swept its intense beam across the wall surfaces. Scrubbed graffiti, vandalism from across the ages, scarred much of the grotto’s surface. But the north wall, with the doors, was cordoned off by a low stone wall above which hung a thick rope tied to metal rings secured to the sidewalls.
Joe sat on the low wall, swung his long legs to the other side, slipped under the rope, stood to his feet, and began to study the north wall.
“We are trying to keep the north wall clean . . . no graffiti.”
Joe’s heart pounded at the sound of the voice behind him. But the voice held no enmity, only invitation. “This sorry excuse for a barrier is there to protect it from . . . oy . . . I told them it would not work.”
He turned to find the man who had been sleeping behind the desk, a smile waiting for him.
“Is there something I can help you with?” the man inquired. “Perhaps I can show you some of the rare carvings on the wall that has caught your interest? Oy . . . I sound like I’m still selling leather jackets on Orchard Street.”
Rodriguez started. “The Lower East Side?”
The man’s eyes lit up the dim cavern. “Ahhh . . . and you?”
“Washington Heights.”
“Well, then, Washington Heights, what can I show you?”
Joe relaxed. He had found an ally. “Was this really—”
“Just a moment,” said the man, holding out his hand. “Ten shekels, then we begin your education.”
“Okay,” said Rodriguez, dropping a handful of coins into the man’s right palm. “How do you know for sure that this is—”
The man’s left hand came up, palm out. “Patience, my New York friend. Patience. For ten shekels, I throw in my sales pitch, for free. It’s a bargain.” He pointed. “Sit.”
Rodriguez was now a prisoner of someone else’s timetable. He sat again on the low wall and stretched his long legs.
“Thank you,” the man said, reaching forward for Joe’s hand. “Ronald Fineman, formerly of Queens, New York City, retired owner of Leather World on Orchard Street.” Ronald Fineman’s thinning hair was swept straight back from a prominent brow. His head nodded punctuation to every word he spoke and the goatee on the end of his chin bobbed like a teacher’s pointer. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Sorry, no. I’m Joseph Rodriguez, raised in the Bronx and now living in Washington Heights. Curator of the Periodicals Room at the Humanities and Social Science Library on Bryant Park. It’s a pleasure.”
“Ah . . . the one with the lions,” Fineman said of the iconic pair of crouching lions that flanked the main entrance to the ornate, Beaux-Arts Library on Fifth Avenue. “A beautiful building. I’ve been there to see the Gutenberg Bible. And the Jewish division”—Fineman’s dark eyes sparked with an inner joy and flanked a thin, pointy nose—“that is right next to the Periodicals Room . . . the one with all the beautiful murals of the old newspaper buildings in Manhattan, correct?”
“That’s right . . . the DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Room. It was named for the founder of Reader’s Digest magazine, who used it to find articles he then condensed in the magazine. That is my domain.”
Fineman nodded his head, his goatee bobbing as if to a musical beat. “So, Joe the librarian, what can I sell you today?”
Joe looked around the large cavern then back at his host. “Well, Mr. Fineman—”
“Rabbi Fineman . . . I’ve had a change of occupation. That’s what brought me to Jerusalem.”
“Okay, rabbi, I’d like to know more about why this place is called Jeremiah’s Grotto. I mean, does it really have anything to do with the prophet Jeremiah?”
“Ah,” purred Fineman, “the speech.” He sat on the wall next to Rodriguez, put his hand on Joe’s arm, and captured him with the earnestness of his eyes. “There are many stories and legends about this cave. Some say it was a tomb. Some say it was only a prison. Others, who reject the older site within the city and believe the hill above us is Calvary, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, believe this place was a stable, a place where pilgrims to the site kept their donkeys. And some say Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations in this cave while he was in prison.
“There are also legends about this place in the book of Islam,” said Fineman, shrugging his shoulders. “There is a tradition that when Nebuchadnezzar was a poor, afflicted lad his future greatness and the misfortune of this battle-scarred city were foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. Flattered by the prophecy of greatness, Nebuchadnezzar extended an amnesty to Jeremiah . . . a safe-conduct that would protect him and keep him unharmed from the future Babylonian invasion. Jeremiah pleaded with Nebuchadnezzar that Jerusalem be spared, but the Assyrian emperor was in no mood to be lenient toward Zedekiah, the king of Israel who led a rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar’s rule. Jeremiah, however, did receive a promise from Allah, the god of Islam, that he would witness the restoration of the city.
“But the Assyrian siege was so devastating, Jerusalem and its inhabitants suffered so severely—many starving people cannibalizing their own children—the situation was so appalling to Jeremiah that he lost hope and doubted God. So Allah, the god of Islam, brought a sleep onto Jeremiah that lasted for one hundred years. When Jeremiah awoke, the skeleton of his donkey also awoke, put on sk
in and flesh, and began to bray. At the calling of the donkey, both Jeremiah and the donkey were admitted to Paradise.”
Fineman lifted his hands and twisted them back and forth while shaking his head. “An interesting fable, perhaps, but there are lots of stories and fables about this place.”
“So,” asked Rodriguez, “what’s the truth?”
Fineman’s body audibly creaked as he pushed himself to his feet. “Come over here. Let me show you something that might interest you.” The old man walked into the shadows at the southeast corner of the grotto. Joe followed him over to a shallow alcove. “In this grotto, this alcove is the closest you can get to the site of the old Jewish Temple. Here . . . throw your light onto this wall.”
Rodriguez pulled out the flashlight and followed Fineman’s finger to a group of symbols etched in the stone. “This one on the top,” said Fineman, “this is Jeremiah’s signature in Hebrew.”
Joe ran his fingers over the markings. Next to Jeremiah’s signature was a symbol that looked like an angel’s wing next to a door. Below those a set of symbols Joe was becoming quite familiar with, a budding shepherd’s staff and a scorpion. And below those, a pair of Phoenician letters with which Rodriguez was intimately acquainted. “Abiathar’s signature!”
“How do you know this?”
“Oh . . . something I read once,” said Rodriguez. “Ah . . . this one, the angel and the door, what does that one mean?”
Fineman also reached out his hand toward the markings. “The house of God, the Temple or, perhaps, the Tent of Meeting. The place where God lived.”
He turned to face Rodriguez again. “But . . . tell me, Joe from New York, how do you know Abiathar’s signature? You may have read something about him recently . . . his name has been in the news. But not his signature. Only a few select people on this earth would know the significance of the aleph and the resh.”
Rodriguez felt the old man’s eyes on him. He tried to regain his composure, but exhilaration and panic were racing through his body like an August thunderstorm. “I’ve seen those symbols before.”
Fineman reached out his right hand and placed it on Rodriguez’s arm.
“You were one of those who found the Temple, yes?”
“Yes,” said Rodriguez, nodding his head. He held the man’s gaze and read a litany of unasked questions revealed in his face. Fineman squeezed his arm and smiled, but kept silent. “And I’ll bet that the staff, scorpion, and Abiathar’s mark were added to the wall after Jeremiah’s signature.”
“Where did you see this mark before?” Fineman asked, gesturing toward the staff and scorpion carved into the wall.
“The sign of the scorpion and the budding staff were etched into the surface of the mezuzah that Abiathar sent to Egypt,” said Joe. “The same two symbols are carved into the lintel over the door leading to the library in St. Anthony’s Monastery in the Egyptian desert.”
Fineman nodded in thought. “So now you are chasing clues from the mezuzah itself?”
“I’m not sure what we’re doing, yet,” said Rodriguez. “We’re just trying to make some sense of things we’ve found.”
Rodriguez turned his back to the wall, leaned up against it, and tried to read the expression on Fineman’s face. But the elderly rabbi was anxiously waiting for more.
“The scorpion mark and the budding staff were added to the surface of the mezuzah some time after the original designs were etched into it. The markings were different . . . made by a different hand, a different tool, like these.” He gestured over his shoulder. “We believe the scorpion image, and some other images, were added in Egypt where the mezuzah was hidden, probably in the monastery.
“And we’ve found another mark with Jeremiah’s signature,” Rodriguez added. “There was a group of papyrus documents found in Egypt in the nineteenth century, the Elephantine Papyri. One of them, an older document that was passed down from father to son for three generations, is a record of Jeremiah acquiring ownership rights to land in Persia, of all places. At the bottom of the document is a cartouche that contains the hieroglyph for sounding out Jeremiah’s name and—like this—the shepherd’s staff, along with a symbol for the island of Gibraltar. But no scorpion.
“What do you think, Rabbi Fineman? What does it mean?”
Fineman looked out of the side of his eye as if assessing Rodriguez for the first time.
“Did you know, my friend from New York, that there is a book in the Christian scriptures that claims Jeremiah took the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant and buried them on Mount Nebo?”
“The book of Maccabees,” said Rodriguez, “says that the Tent was buried on the same mountain where Moses was buried.”
Ronald Fineman rubbed the yarmulke over the top of his head as his eyes searched the shadows. “I think your knowledge of these symbols means you are on another quest, are you not?” Fineman asked. He turned his body to face Rodriguez. “You seek something that has been lost to antiquity. The House of God, if I am not mistaken. Your friend, Abiathar, sent you on a quest for a Temple, eh? Now, if my hunch is correct, you are following Abiathar’s clues on a quest for a Tent, eh?”
Joe nodded his head.
“Well, I may know where you should look.”
“There are only two possibilities.”
Colonel David Posner and Levi Sharp paused in front of the graves of Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin in the Mt. Herzl Memorial Park in the western part of Jerusalem, near the Knesset. The path through the Garden of Heroes was shaded by rows of native pine and cypress trees and ranks of cedars of Lebanon that guarded its flanks. Sharp wore dark sunglasses against the afternoon glare. Still Posner could feel the power of the director’s stare radiating from behind the lenses. If not for the discipline of his military training, or the rage that blotted out all his other emotions, Posner would have been sick to his stomach at the report he had to give.
“Major Mordechai and I have spent the last four days reviewing every name, every history,” he said. “Mordechai has posed as a reporter, writing a feature story about each of the original twelve, and interviewed old friends and family members, looking for flaws, breaks in the narrative. We focused most of our time on the four I showed you and pored over every detail of the past two weeks. We searched for some change in routine, some time that could not be accounted for, some motive that might drive one of them to betray us.”
Sharp gently pressed his hand against Posner’s left elbow. “We should keep walking.”
Posner felt foolish, taking precautions against being spied on in the middle of Jerusalem. But he knew the two names on the piece of paper in his pocket—powerful and resourceful men. Ridiculous as it seemed on the surface, he and Sharp must take every precaution. This was dangerous territory.
“Go on.”
“There were only two who separated from the others,” said Posner. “And that only because of something we found in each of their past lives. Something very personal. Something that could turn a man’s heart and soul from one path to another.”
They rounded the corner of the path and walked alongside the reflecting pool. Posner withdrew the slip of paper from his pocket.
“Come over here.” Rabbi Fineman returned to the low wall and sat. Rodriguez joined him as the old man reached a finger toward the floor and began scratching in the dust. “This priest, Abiathar, did leave you another message.” Fineman drew a straight, vertical line in the dust and added two irregular circles at either end. “This is the Jordan River,” he said, pointing to the line. “Here is the Sea of Galilee in the north, the Dead Sea in the south.” He made a mark on the eastern side of the Jordan.
“Here is Mount Nebo, on the far side of the Jordan River, opposite Jericho.” He swept an oval to the west—“the Mediterranean”—pierced the south with the shape of a dagger—“the Red Sea”—then drew a triangle to the east and a square to the west of the Red Sea—“the Negev desert here and Egypt there. We know Jeremiah traveled to Egypt with the exiles.”
Fineman turned quickly toward Rodriguez, then back to his dust drawing. In the middle of the Negev, Fineman scratched out a familiar symbol—the scorpion.
“These carvings on the wall in the alcove are directions,” said Fineman. “Mount Nebo is the starting point. This,” he said, stabbing his finger into the midst of the scorpion, “was one of the destinations.”
“The scorpion means desert?” asked Rodriguez. “The Negev?”
Fineman shook his head back and forth. “No, but it is a place. The Ascent of Akkrabim.”
“The what?”
Fineman chuckled. “The Ascent of Akkrabim, Mr. Rodriguez. Akkrabim means scorpion and there is a place in the Negev called Scorpion Pass . . . the steepest road in the entire country of Israel. It’s an ancient trade route through some of the most barren, God-forsaken land in the world. It winds nearly straight up from the basin of the Dead Sea, the Wadi of Arabah, through the mountains of the Negev, and into the lusher interior of Israel. And, along the Ascent of Akkrabim, my friend, are hundreds of caves eroded out of the brown stone by the ages. Its climate is very similar to, and its location close to, the Essene caves which held and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Joe felt his heart racing. This was it. He was sure of it. Only . . . which cave?
“Someone has been leaving you clues, Mr. Rodriguez. I’m not sure who took the Tent of Meeting to Scorpion Pass. Either Jeremiah on his way to Egypt, or Abiathar before he fled to Tripoli. But both Jeremiah and Abiathar are pointing you toward Scorpion Pass.”
Rodriguez looked once more at the crude drawing in the dust, shook his head and launched himself to his feet. “Okay . . . well . . . thank you, Rabbi. Really . . . thank you. But I’ve got to get going. It looks like a long journey and I don’t have a lot of time.” Rodriguez stuck out his hand.
“Not so fast, Joe from Washington Heights.” Ronald Fineman rose to his feet, the bones in his knees cracking. “There is more you need to know.”
The Brotherhood Conspiracy Page 27