The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (13 page)

“There is only one place in this world where Aaron’s staff will be safe,” said Jeremiah. “Only one place where it will truly be hidden. And that is returning the staff to its home, allowing God to restore the staff to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from where it came. Once the staff becomes part of the tree, who can tell where one begins and the other ends? And what better guardians than the warrior angels of God?

“But you are right, Baruch. We cannot allow the Ark and the Tent to remain here, under the Temple. This fool of a king will one day soon defy Nebuchadnezzar, and the emperor will come. And when he comes again, Nebuchadnezzar will destroy everything—even what we believe is forever hidden beneath the Temple. When we return, we will move the Ark. And over time, piece by piece, we will move the Tent. But my son, the staff comes with us. The Ark is only a box without the staff.”

He rose from the bench and crossed the room to a small, dust-covered table, two chairs flanking its sides. “Have you been to the tanner?”

Baruch reached into the cloth bag he had flung onto a bin of barley flour and pulled out a round piece of leather, about two centimeters thick, with a hole in the middle. “It took him quite some time to design the pieces.” The leather disc was about ten centimeters across. Baruch separated it into two parts. “He is very ingenious. See, the sides go together the same, no matter how you turn them, and they fit together tightly.” He handed the disc to Jeremiah.

“Well done,” said Jeremiah. “Now we must prepare.”

Babylon

“You honor me with your presence.”

Jeremiah continued to bow from his shoulders—the best his aging bones would allow after such a long journey—and spoke to the glittering mosaic floor. “How could my presence honor the emperor of the world?”

“Stand. Bring him a chair,” Nebuchadnezzar ordered.

Jeremiah straightened and sat when the chair was placed behind him. He looked up at the throne platform. Nebuchadnezzar was a bear of a man. Taller and broader than any in the royal court, he looked more like a warrior than a king. He wore a long, sleeveless, embroidered tunic, the fringe along its hem brushing across the floor. His arms bore the muscles of a blacksmith—hard, thick, and massive. Wide, gold bands were wrapped around his biceps and forearms, as if trying to constrain his strength. His hair was dark and braided, laddered down his back to his waist. His beard, full, dark, and dense, was braided and oiled so that it jutted out from his chin like a massive spearhead.

For all Nebuchadnezzar’s imposing stature and royal bearing, what struck Jeremiah as most surprising was the gentleness of the emperor’s face. Jeremiah had expected a hardened, scarred countenance, the face of a ruthless conqueror, an executioner of men, women, and children. But this face revealed no murderer, no butcher. His eyes were gentle and bright, a warm smile lifting his cheeks. There was exuberance, an overflowing of goodwill toward Jeremiah that stunned the prophet.

“You look at me as if I were some apparition of the gods,” said Nebuchadnezzar, his voice as smooth and polished as his throne. “What did you expect to see, my friend?”

Jeremiah looked steadily into Nebuchadnezzar’s eyes. “My enemy,” he said.

The laugh that erupted from the king rocked his shoulders and threw back his head. “Your enemy? How could that be possible?” he asked. “You yourself prophesied about my conquests, about my kingdom, about my power. You are my prophet, my herald to your God who gives me favor. How could I ever have anything but gratitude toward you, my friend? I brought you here to honor you, not to harm you.”

Jeremiah was about to chastise this king for his irreverence toward the Almighty when bells chimed from his left. He and others in the throne room turned toward the sound.

He came into the royal courts with the bearing, the raiment, and the attendants of a prince. But unlike the king, Daniel’s hair was golden and long, a single braid resting between his shoulder blades. He walked strong and straight, a man of power and influence without fear or deference in the king’s presence. Daniel was shorter than Jeremiah anticipated, but he carried his body erect and the glow that shone from his face was supernatural.

“Welcome, Counselor,” said Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel bowed at the waist and held his open palms extended at his sides—the Eastern custom that paid homage to the ruler, offered the back of the neck as a symbol of fealty and surrender, and showed that a man’s hands were empty of any weapon. “Here,” Nebuchadnezzar said, pointing in Jeremiah’s direction “is your countryman, Jeremiah the prophet. Take him into your home and care for his needs. He is my guest so that I may thank him for the honor he prophesied over me.”

Nebuchadnezzar turned to Jeremiah. “Rest, my friend. It’s been a long journey. Tomorrow, if you feel refreshed, perhaps then we can speak of your God and his vision for Babylon.”

Jeremiah, still dizzied by the genuine warmth of the king’s words and drained of strength by the arduous journey through the Persian desert, inclined his aged head toward the king and turned toward the man whose invitation was the true reason he had spent the last several weeks in such unbearable heat. It was Daniel who begged Jeremiah to make the trip to Babylon—and to bring with him his most precious cargo. “Counselor, I am in your hands.”

They sat under a sycamore tree, on a platform raised over the Euphrates River, Baruch at his left side. The combination of shade from the tree and the breeze that flowed as languidly as the river itself brought comfort, rejuvenating Jeremiah just as much as his conversation with these two men so close to his heart.

“I’ve been here since Nebuchadnezzar’s first conquest of Israel, eleven years ago.” Daniel held a small, horsehair fan in his left hand, absently brushing the flies from his head as he spoke of his experience as an exile from Jerusalem. “But it’s only by the power of God that I’ve survived this long, and by his grace that I’ve achieved such favor in the eyes of the king. Both my years and my position have been used by God to bring about his plan.”

Daniel was a young man compared to Jeremiah, nearly thirty years his junior. And even though Daniel showed deference to his guest, there was a relaxed, unaffected manner with which Daniel accepted authority and command.

“Once I rose in rank among the wise men of the king, one of the elders told me the story of the city, and I realized that Babylon was built on holy ground. For the Babylonians, it was a secret they wanted to bury. When the emperor selected me to oversee construction of the great tower, I knew this was our chance to protect the power of the staff forever.

“The king was not satisfied with the six towers that currently exist. Nebuchadnezzar wanted a monument to his power, to his empire. He wanted a tower that would reach to the heavens. Now it is almost finished, and the king shall have his moment with God. But he is not aware that the God he will meet is not the God he expects … the Holy One of Israel who had his hand on this project from the beginning. Nebuchadnezzar called upon me when his architects and builders claimed the tower he envisioned could not be built. I told him he needed a foundation dug deeply into the ground, on the same scale as the tower above. So he set me to the task.

“In the middle of the month of Nissan, my workers reached the planned depth of the foundation and finished its walls. But while the work began on the tower above, my helpers cut a door in the side of the foundation at its base, and my diggers kept digging. As Nebuchadnezzar built his stairway up to heaven, we dug a shaft deeper and deeper, extending the stairway far into the bowels of the earth.

“We had thousands of Israelites as slave labor. While many workers were forced to build the tower above, just as many continued to dig the foundation below. It was a simple task to divert hundreds of men into the enormous foundation pit each day. A stone stairway was built into the side of the foundation, leading down into the depths. Few of the Babylonian guards ventured into the pit. They were afraid. Those of our captors who did enter, spoke in hushed tones about the very real presence they felt the deeper they went under the surface.”

Jeremiah’s head was bobbing in agreement. “Just as the presence dwells under Mount Zion. Do you believe the king is aware of where he is building?”

Daniel’s fan swished away the flies that gathered unnoticed in Jeremiah’s beard. “Nebuchadnezzar never does anything without being fully aware. Nebuchadnezzar’s library has several histories that recount the story of Noah and Nimrod—and the garden. For Nebuchadnezzar, building his tower over the location where his wise men believe the garden rests is an act of defiance. His intention is to bury the garden even farther, not only under thousands of years of dirt, but under his great tower, as well.”

“But why did you send for me?” asked Jeremiah. “My bones ache when I remain still. Baruch could have carried the staff to you.”

Daniel stopped waving the fan and turned to face Jeremiah directly. “Because to enter the garden, we must deal with the angelic ones. And they have called for you, specifically.”

“You’ve been there?” Jeremiah was astonished—and frightened.

“Only once,” said Daniel. “And that was enough.”

O
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Daniel came out of the sunshine and into the great hall at the base of the tower, his eyes momentarily blinded by the darkness within. But he didn’t slow his pace. He walked swiftly across the floor still covered with construction dust to the far side, his eyes picking out the door as they adjusted to the deep shade inside the hall. Several hundred meters above him, the king’s masons were still laying stone as the tower inched ever skyward. But Daniel’s destination was down, not up.

“They discovered the cavern this morning and sent me to find you,” said the foreman, a small, burly man who scrambled in Daniel’s wake. “As soon as the first shovel broke through, I ordered the men to stop.”

The stone steps were slick as Daniel hurried deeper into the foundation’s depths. “Any sense of how large the cavern may be?”

Ezekiel struggled to keep up behind him, but Daniel was fully focused on the stairs as they materialized in the torchlight.

“No, but it must be very large,” said the foreman. “A wind blew through the hole when it was first opened, and it was still blowing when I came to fetch you.”

They reached the base of the foundation and turned back, into the space under the stairs. Hidden by the near-complete darkness under the stairs, Daniel’s fingers felt for the edge of a second door, ran down its length, and found the handle. The moist air inside the door brought a chill to Daniel’s skin. Ezekiel lit a second torch just inside the door, and they pushed on.

Here, there were no stairs, only a narrow shaft with a rugged floor the width of two men’s shoulders and a roof arched just above their heads. Not for the first time, Daniel thanked his God for the thick clay of the Euphrates flood plain. Hard to dig, heavy to carry, but solid and nearly as safe as stone. Moisture formed on the sides of the shaft, reminding them of the great river nearby but, thus far, the clay held itself in place.

Mindful of the slick surface beneath his feet, Daniel hurried nonetheless. Each of his workers brought sand into the shaft each day, covering the floor, but it was seldom enough.

The shaft was not long, but it curved to the east, away from the river. He could see the faint flicker of light reflected off the walls and, as they moved closer, could hear the sound of muted voices. The last piles of clay dug by the workers had been carried up the shaft, giving Daniel a clear path.

The three teams—one to dig, one to rest, and one to carry the debris up the shaft to the great foundation room—lined up along the walls. Their leader stood at the end of the shaft. His shirt was off, and his left hand held in place some cloth stuffed into a hole about shoulder high.

“What have you found?”

“We are not certain, Chancellor, but there is something beyond here that gives the feeling of being vast and empty. Perhaps the cavern we seek?”

Daniel planted his feet firmly on the base of the shaft and faced the foreman. “Break it down.”