The Sacred Cipher (24 page)

Feeling the irritation of sleepless nights and annoyance at Doc’s interruption, Bohannon
cut off Johnson’s argument. “Look, Doc, if—”

“Stop, Tom,” Johnson flared.

Bohannon felt the burn at the back of his neck, heat rising through his cheeks, wrapping
around his temples.

“This is an international diplomatic bombshell,” Johnson continued. “If everything
we’ve discovered is true, and there is a Third Temple sitting under the Temple Mount
as we speak, and the world finds out about it before the State Department can huddle
with the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians—and
probably the Syrians and Lebanese—well, when people say ‘All hell will break loose,’
they’re speaking about this situation.”

“C’mon, Doc . . . you’re not lecturing to a bunch of undergrads, now,” Bohannon complained.
“You’re blowing this up a bit—”

“No, no,” said Johnson, throwing up his hands and forestalling budding objections,
“you’ve got to be crazy to even think of continuing with this search. We were in this
to find out what the scroll said, then we were in it to find out if its message was
possible. But now, gentlemen, this is all beyond us. Do you think you can ignore the
fact that two of us have nearly been killed in the last few weeks in what appears
to be purposeful attacks?”

“We’re not ignoring anything.” Tom heard his voice rising, powerless to quiet it.
“We’re still not sure what we’ve got . . . if it’s true.”

“These people don’t need true, don’t you understand that?” Johnson challenged. “Look
at what happened just recently. An earthen bridge leading to the Temple Mount was
washed away by severe weather. When the Israelis tried to repair the bridge, the Muslim
community erupted. Claimed the Israelis were trying to undermine the Dome of the Rock
and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. There were riots in the streets of the Old City.”

Johnson got out of his chair and stood over the map, pointing his long, bony finger
directly at the Dome of the Rock. “That, gentlemen, is a ticking dirty bomb,” he said
with emphasis, his finger thumping on the position. “Something stupid or inconsequential
could set off a feeding frenzy of violence that would shock the world and threaten
peace for all of us.”

Bohannon buried his head into his hands, shaking it back and forth. “Another doomsday
prediction? Is that what you have for us?” Jackhammers pounded at his temples. “Look,
Johnson, you were wrong about Swinton, and you’re wrong about this, too.”

Tension shimmered through the room. Bohannon raised his head. The others were still,
staring at him. Johnson, standing next to the desk, oscillated at the wavelength of
rage, purple fury painted on the flesh above his collar.

Bohannon could taste the air, that metallic scorch that followed on the heels of lightning.

“Still the bully, Mr. Bohannon?” Johnson, his voice hollow, tremulous, looked like
he wanted to step toward Bohannon but didn’t trust himself to lose his grasp on the
desk. “Strike first, think later—is that not the journalist’s mantra?”

Bohannon’s heart clutched his throat. Old wounds—and a new betrayal—lay like a shroud
over the window to Johnson’s soul.
Oh, God . . .

“What,” Johnson asked, his voice trailing down to a whisper, “would the resident madmen
of the Middle East do if, because of some inadvertent slip one of us makes, one morning
next week they tuned into Fox News and discovered that the Third Temple of the Jews
was ready and waiting for ritual sacrifice, and the coming of the Messiah, and none
of the governments of the Middle East had any idea this was going to hit the radar
screen?

“Moving forward with this now, on our own, would be madness.”

Johnson set both hands on the desk in front of him, covering a significant section
of the map, and tried to hold his emotions in check. He was determined. The others
must understand. They must see his logic, must accept his argument.

“Taking this information, traveling to Jerusalem, attempting to gain access to the
underbelly of Temple Mount, searching for a hidden temple—gentlemen, this is a death
warrant. Trained, covert operatives would be putting their lives in danger trying
this same stunt. But there’s a more important consideration than our lives, than the
lives of seven million Israelis and countless followers of Islam.”

Johnson steadied his voice. “We may be pushing the button for the end of the world.”

Johnson waited for Bohannon to erupt once again, for a barrage of objections. But
none came forth. Johnson figured he knew why.

Ever since they had unlocked the code and deciphered the meaning of the scroll, Johnson
wondered in the back of his mind about the discovery of the Third Temple, and what
that would mean to the eschatological history of the world. He expected the others
were wondering the same thing.

For more than two decades, Johnson had wandered through the world’s religions, looking
for something that made sense, that had some meaning for him, that struck a supernatural
chord. He hadn’t found it yet. But he picked up enough knowledge to know that the
temple had something to do with the Antichrist, Armageddon, and the end of the world.
He didn’t know exactly what, but he did know that this was very explosive information
and that it needed to be handled by experts.

This was not the time for a bunch of amateur archaeologists to go bumbling around
Jerusalem and start World War Last.

Johnson looked at his compatriots, who appeared wilted like last week’s lettuce. Only
Larsen entered the void. He took Johnson’s arm and led him out of Rodriguez’s office.

“Doc, you make a strong argument,” Larsen said quietly as they stood in a corner of
the Periodicals Reading Room. “There certainly is a lot at stake. And we may get to
a place where we need to step away and let the professionals deal with the possibility
of a Third Temple. But I don’t think we’re there yet. Sure, we’ve got the scroll and
the secret message, and we all believe the message is real. What we don’t know is
how it could be possible. How is it possible that a temple is under Temple Mount and
has never been found? What do you think any government officer would do if we went
to him with what we have so far . . . a half-formed theory with little factual support?
We may, someday, need to face the doomsday scenario you fear, and that will force
us to make some tough decisions. But making that decision now is a bit premature.”

Larsen’s argument was logical.

“Look, why don’t you and I look into the question of the Mount? These guys can go
home to their wives and their jobs and rest for a bit. Let’s you and I see if we can
put together a strong argument—a realistic, supportable argument—that eleventh-century
Jews could have accomplished this amazing feat. If we can do that, along with translating
the message of the scroll, maybe then we have something to take to a government official.
Until then, well, I’d feel a little foolish trying to spin this yarn to the State
Department.”

Johnson knew Larsen was right.

“Okay. Tomorrow morning, my office. But if we get closer to this thing, we’re heading
to Washington, not Jerusalem. I’m too old to die now.”

Turning away from Larsen toward Joe’s office, Johnson came face-to-face with Bohannon.
There were tears on Tom’s cheeks.

“Doc, I’m so sorry. That was rude . . . mean-spirited . . . cruel to bring up Randall.”
Bohannon’s eyes were pleading. “I’m sorry, Doc. Please forgive me.”

Johnson opened his mouth, but no words came. He offered his right hand to Bohannon.
And found himself in a warm, earnest, shaking hug.

The walls and bookcases of Johnson’s Collector’s Club office were covered with huge,
blown-up copies of ancient and modern maps of Jerusalem. They included topographic
studies of the Temple Mount, enlarged drawings of walls, gates, and steps, plus ancient
documents, like those sketched by Charles Warren, which suggested routes for tunnels
and other water sources in and around the Temple Mount.

Winthrop Larsen caressed the polished oak of the bookcases like the back of a long-lost
love. He stood just inside the door and allowed the room to embrace him, his gaze
absorbing every detail of Johnson’s occupancy. He lowered his books to the table with
care.

As he settled himself in the chair next to Johnson, Larsen caught himself fiddling
with the Italian silk tie that hung incongruously around his neck. The tie mocked
his familiar faded blue jeans and battered Top-Siders. Thankfully, he hadn’t worn
the same color or design as Johnson’s.

Johnson and Larsen, both with letter-sized pads of paper, began taking notes, jotting
down questions, and making lists as they tried to work themselves through different
alternatives. Johnson had a fistful of his favorite writing instruments stashed in
a coffee mug to his left—new or fairly new Ticonderoga #2 pencils, each sharpened
to a precise point.

“The first question we need to answer is where to look,” said Larsen, who tried vainly
to breathe through his apprehension, the familiar stage fright that always accompanied
his deliberations with Johnson. “It’s a huge area to be investigating underground.
The top of the Temple Mount is thirty-six acres by itself. The base of the mountain
will be a great deal larger. Doing a random search, even if it were possible, could
take us a year, and we still wouldn’t find anything.”

Johnson looked up from his pad. “We have one advantage,” he said. “We’re not the first
ones to face that problem. Abiathar and his Jews would have faced the same issue,
how and where to get access without being observed. They obviously had a way in and
a way to get access to their cavern. It’s possible that they used an existing tunnel
or some other method of entry to get under the Mount. And it’s likely that it would
not have been a tunnel that anyone else would have normally used. So it’s got to be
obscure, or abandoned by the time of the tenth or eleventh century.”

Larsen got up and crossed to the poster board taped to the front of a bookcase, upon
which were pasted ancient drawings of tunnels, gates, walls, and waterways. Then he
crossed the room and stood before a massive map of ancient Jerusalem with more than
a dozen other views and cutaways framed around the edges.
Perhaps this is what all the study was about
, Larsen thought as he ran his mind over the Jerusalem terrain.
Perhaps this is what all the training, all the trips, all the research has led to.
Thank God it’s led to something. Perhaps now my father will find some value in my
life. Perhaps now he will understand. Perhaps Richard will . . .

“Richard, you’ve gathered a great deal of valuable information here in a short time,”
Larsen said as he turned away from the maps. “I congratulate you. But there are other
significant possibilities that we should consider, perhaps add to these maps. First
of all, we need to remember that there were at least five gates, the Huldah Gates,
in the lower reaches of the southern wall. Herod built the wall to support the platform
on top of the Temple Mount, and at least two of those gates led to underground tunnels
that ascended up through the mountain and exited on the platform near the entrance
to the temple.” Larsen picked up a red grease pencil and began to mark locations on
the map of ancient Jerusalem. “The gates were here,” he said, making small squares,
“and exited here.”

“Yes, I remember,” Johnson said, pointing the deadly end of his pencil at the map
Larsen marked. “We took a group from the museum to examine those gates about ten years
ago. The most western gate, the Double Gate, has a double-arch entryway and a double-section
lobby once inside the gate, while the most eastern one, the Triple Gate, has a triple
archway on the front, which is now blocked, and a lobby of three rooms behind the
entrance. General archaeological opinion is that there were two and three passages,
respectively, leading up from the gates. But no one knows what is behind the other
three gates.”

Larsen turned from the maps and walked back to the table where Johnson was making
lists.

“Don’t you think it strange, Richard, that there has been so much archaeological interest
in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, yet there remains so much that is completely unknown?

“I recently saw a quote from Hershel Shanks in
Biblical Archaeology Review,”
Larsen said, as he flipped to the article. “‘The City of David, a long, narrow ridge
extending south from the Temple Mount . . . was home to Jerusalem’s earliest settlers.
But how much do we know about this crucial site? Despite, or perhaps because of, its
claim to being the most excavated city in the world, Jerusalem continues to confound,
and sometimes delight, archaeologists as recent excavations force them to rewrite
the history of the ancient city, its fortifications and its water system.’ It appears
as if every week science is finding out more and more about Jerusalem, about the placement
of its walls, the variety and security of its water systems, the spread of the city.”