The Sacred Cipher (23 page)

“I’m proud of your character and your integrity, Tom. And most important, I fully
believe that God will protect you and enable you to fulfill this work he has called
you to.”

Bohannon’s mind stalled. This was overload. This was abundance of blessing. This was
. . .

“Come on, hon,” Annie said, pushing back her chair and rising from the table. “Let’s
go home and cuddle.”

Bohannon’s smile lit up the night outside. And Alejandro was surprised by an unusually
large tip.

Seven thirty in the morning comes late in New York City. Commuters by the tens of
thousands are on the move by five o’clock in order to reach Manhattan before the bridges
and tunnels get clogged, before the Long Island Railroad and Metro North trains are
turned into sardine cans on wheels.

Only a few leaden-eyed stragglers from Friday morning’s first wave remained in the
coffee shop on Third Avenue, just a few blocks off Grand Central Station, when Bohannon
stumbled through the door, looking like he was still half asleep, the last to arrive.

Winthrop Larsen believed the coffee shop must have been modern in some earlier life.
Now its chrome was dull, the plastic seats in the booths cracked and broken. But it
smelled of fresh brewed coffee and toasted bagels. And that was good enough.

The location was ideal because it was close to the Bryant Park library for Joe and
Sammy, Tom could walk over from Grand Central after exiting the subway, and it was
convenient to Winthrop’s hotel. Doc was needed at the Collector’s Club, so it was
just the four of them.

Winthrop was in the middle of a debate when Tom joined the others in a spacious, corner
booth.

“You’ve got to admit, this story of yours is hard to believe,” Larsen said. He rubbed
his forehead.
How do I get through to them?

“So we’ve got some major hurdles to clear.” Joe threw up his hands. “But yesterday
even you said it was possible for a temple to be under the Temple Mount.”

“I also said it could be bogus,” Larsen volleyed, his index finger punctuating each
word. “Just because something is plausible, or possible, doesn’t mean it’s real.”

“Hey,” Bohannon interrupted, “can I get some coffee before we start duking it out?”
Tom waved down a waiter, got a cup of coffee, and added on his order for blueberry
pancakes.

“Look,” said Larsen, “you guys believe there’s a hit squad out there waiting for you,
determined to wipe each one of you off the face of the earth. Now, I agree that the
Doc and Mr. Bohannon have had some close calls. So it’s understandable that you could
feel there is some force out there opposing you.

“But it’s also possible that this cross with the lightning bolt is the new punk rock
symbol and six million have been sold around the world. And it’s possible for men
with Middle Eastern features to be feeling a bit tender when they are accused of doing
some evil thing in New York City. And it’s also possible that the message on the scroll
is a fabrication.”

Larsen was divided. Half of him wanted to believe this unbelievable story while the
other half was laughing at his own naïveté. A divided mind was unacceptable for a
scientist.

“Joe, listen . . . if we’re ever going to take significant steps toward discerning
the veracity of this temple claim, then we have to do it from a position of independent,
unbiased observation, not assumptions. We need to test everything we believe, as much
as possible.”

“Okay,” said Bohannon, “so yesterday, based on your understanding of geology and the
history of Temple Mount archaeology, we agreed it was possible to find or create a
space beneath the Temple Mount that would allow construction of a Third Temple.”

“But that still leaves us with a lot of questions,” said Rizzo, taking his bowl of
oatmeal and bananas as the breakfasts arrived.

“The piece of this puzzle that’s been driving me nuts,” Rizzo continued, “is how eleventh-century
Jews could accumulate the materials necessary to construct the temple and get those
materials through a tunnel, under the Temple Mount, without being discovered. Right?”

Heads nodded.

“Well, I think I may have an answer,” said Rizzo. “Look . . . I was checking this
out last night.”

Rizzo moved some of the dishes around, making space in the middle of the table, and
laid down a piece of copy paper. On the paper were drawn a series of rectangles of
different sizes. Each rectangle contained a protruding “tongue” on one edge and an
indented “groove” on another end, but the location of the tongue and groove were different
on each block.

“I think the greatest challenge the Jewish builders faced was preparing and transporting
the stones needed to erect the temple,” said Rizzo. “In most of the construction from
that era, mortar wasn’t used to keep the stones connected. Instead, builders cut each
stone specifically to fit in its exact position relative to the other stones around
it. Each ‘tongue’ was in the right place and fit perfectly into each ‘groove,’ supplying
the building with stability and strength.”

Bohannon looked up from his pancakes. “So how did the Jews get all of these huge,
perfectly matched building stones under the Temple Mount without anybody getting suspicious?”

“They didn’t!” Rodriguez held a chunk of omelet suspended over his plate. “That’s
what you figured out, right Sammy?”

“Bingo! Go ahead . . . fill in the blanks, Joe.”

“Okay. The primary building material in Palestine is the one thing they have in abundance,
limestone. The Jews needed to enlarge a cavern in a limestone hill,” said Joe, “and
they needed to cut limestone blocks to build the temple. One plus one equals two.
There was no need to sneak huge blocks of stone through a tunnel and under the Temple
Mount, and there was no debris. Once the location was identified, they just cut the
stone blocks they needed right there, enlarging the cavern as they went along.”

Rodriguez and Rizzo slapped high fives across the table, grinning at each other like
prospectors who just hit paydirt. “You da man, Sammy.”

But Larsen must have been wearing his doubt like a spring jacket. “What is it, Winthrop?”
asked Bohannon.

Winthrop Larsen could have been anything that he put his mind to. More importantly,
Winthrop Larsen could have been nothing at all and still lived a life of privilege
and wealth that few other Americans could imagine. Winthrop’s most endearing trait,
though, was his unflinching honesty and candor, and the analytically questioning mind
upon which that discovery of truth was most often based. Spawned from New England
shipbuilders and traders, Larsen was as stable as Vermont granite, and often nearly
as immovable.

“Gentlemen, these are theories,” Larsen admonished. “Plausible, perhaps even likely,
but theories nonetheless. Sammy, that was a fine analysis, but it’s not verifiable
truth. If we’re thinking about going to Jerusalem to find out whether the temple in
this message actually exists—and we all have to admit that’s where this discussion
is going—then we need to base our decisions on the most complete gathering of facts
possible.”

Larsen could see that his deductive process was about as welcome to these guys as
a toothache. They clearly wanted action.

“So, I have a theory of my own to propose.”

“All right, Winthrop,” hooted Rizzo, “now you’re gettin’ with the program.”

Larsen acquitted himself well at Yale, not only as president of the honors society,
but also as captain of the rugby team and an Ivy League champion sculler. Throughout
his life, Winthrop remarked that the nicest compliment he had ever been paid was that
he “was just a regular guy.” Now he found himself enjoying the camaraderie of these
other guys more and more.

“If we accept that Elijah and Abiathar could have quarried their limestone from under
the Temple Mount while at the same time enlarging their cavern, that still leaves
the problem of the monumental engineering feat that would be required to dig out,
and stabilize, a cavern big enough to construct a temple the size of Solomon’s or
Herod’s that existed on the Temple Mount . . . huge, imposing structures, right?”

Heads nodded in reluctant agreement.

“Wrong!” Larsen snapped. “First of all, trying to construct an exact replica of Solomon’s
Temple would be a challenge since no one has any idea what it looked like. Drawings
from the Middle Ages portray it as a massive citadel or cathedral. But, historically,
this is not very believable. Today we are used to massive monumental structures. The
ancient Levant was a much more modest place. Palaces, public buildings, cultic areas,
and fortresses were the size of today’s smallish cabins. Towns were the size of moderate
Beverly Hills estates. The ancient city of Jerusalem, the City of David, was so small
an area that it took a thousand years to convince the Christian world of its location.”

Larsen’s listeners devoured every word.

“An Israelite temple of Yahweh, contemporary with Solomon’s, was uncovered at Tel
Arad. It’s slightly larger than a modest master bedroom. In the days of Ezra, the
prophet, the crowd who saw the original Second Temple wept because it was so disappointing
in comparison to Solomon’s Temple. Now, their disappointment may have been with its
grandeur, rather than its size. But when Herod refurbished the Second Temple, which
was most likely also refurbished in the Hasmonean period, he not only built a much
larger one, but he supposedly erected the new temple around the older one, while it
was still being used, and only dismantled the older temple when the newer one was
complete.

“So,” said Larsen, looking over the expectant faces, “how big was Solomon’s Temple?
How big was Zerubbabel’s Temple? How big does Abiathar’s Temple have to be? Think
small . . . small, elaborate, and decorated with gold, certainly.

The temples that adorned the surface of the Mount were surrounded by courts and other
buildings. But to build a temple under the Mount, the space need not be massive, not
by modern standards anyway.

“They would have needed some cedar—poles, planks, beams—but that would not have aroused
any suspicion. And they certainly needed a good amount of gold and silver, but that
could have been smuggled inside of sacks.”

Larsen dropped his gaze to the table and scratched the stubble on his right cheek
while his listeners waited patiently. Looking up, he took a deep breath.

“Gentlemen, I will be the first to admit that we are building theory upon theory.
But I believe we have built a strong enough theoretical case to suggest a high level
of probability that a Third Temple could possibly exist under the Temple Mount.”

Larsen weighed the magnitude of his next words in the time it took to drain his cup
of coffee. “I think there is only one way to know for sure. I think somebody has to
go to Jerusalem and poke around under the Temple Mount . . . without getting shot.”

In normal circumstances, Johnson would have been in heaven. He found comfort in the
dusky richness of old leather that mingled with the smell of oil soap and wood polish.
The warming scents of a library, a thick, rich carpet under his feet, a battered but
friendly leather chair waiting to wrap itself around his tired bones.

But these were no normal circumstances. The five members of “the team” had converged
on Rodriguez’s office that cold, gray, rainy Saturday morning.

A few hours ago, they had cleaned off the desk, covered it with a large, topographical
map of Jerusalem, then huddled around the desk, intensely investigating the map and
sharing theories and suggestions.

Johnson wondered whether his compatriots also wrestled with personal doubts and fears.
He seemed to be getting inexorably drawn into a task he did not feel equipped to undertake.
Academic research? . . . An archaeological dig? . . . These he could handle. A search
for the Third Temple of God? At that, Richard Johnson’s heart grew faint. Johnson
had found no peace in atheism, Eastern mysticism, or New Age mantras. To now put himself
into the middle of an age-old religious conflict seemed . . . well . . . sacrilegious,
like he was daring God to prove himself. And how did the others feel? Rodriguez, a
lapsed Catholic; Larsen, raised a proper Episcopalian but now properly nothing at
all; Rizzo, God only knew what; and Bohannon, a Bible-believing Christian with many
unanswered questions. Was this ill-conceived quintet really thinking of taking on
this investigation themselves, an investigation that could trigger seismic change
for two of the world’s great religions? Were they worthy? Were they capable? Were
they crazy?

Johnson caught a questioning look pass from Rodriguez to Bohannon.

“Tom, whaddaya think?” Rodriguez asked.

“I know what I think,” said Johnson, jumping in quickly. “We call the State Department
the first thing Monday morning—the office here in New York—and ask for the man in
charge.”

Johnson plunged forward, not allowing an opening for debate. “We get an appointment
to see him, tell him the story, show him the scroll, the letter, and the message,
and get him to set us up for a meeting in Washington with someone who will know what
to do with this information.”