The Sacred Cipher (56 page)

“Gefen, we got the coordinates from a satellite communication—31°47' north; 35°10'
east. Get there.”

He had the cell phone open before the second ring. “Yes?”

“A satellite communication into the Temple Mount was intercepted,” Leonidas said without
preamble. “The coordinates are 31°47' north; 35°10' east. Israeli soldiers are on
their way. Do what you will. But the Israelis are getting suspicious. This may be
my last communication.”

The Imam felt a twinge of regret and a stab of resistance. “You have been of great
service, Leonidas. You will be rewarded handsomely . . . but only once these men are
dead, or in our hands. Do you understand?”

His cell phone lost its signal, providing a simple answer.

They were on the floor of the anteroom, Doc’s maps spread out in front of them.

“You see, Winthrop and I agreed that Tuvia Sigva got it right, that his theory on
the Temple placed it between the location of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa
Mosque. We thought that location also worked for Warren’s Gate, that Warren’s Gate
was about as close as anyone could come to the original site of the Most Holy Place,
the Holy of Holies, of the Temple. We also agreed that if Abiathar and his father,
Elijah, were determined to construct a temple under the Temple Mount, they would try
to do it in as close proximity as possible to the original Temple’s location.

“We always thought the area around Warren’s Gate would be the most likely location
for Abiathar’s Temple. Except, now we know the Western Wall Tunnel runs right past
Warren’s Gate. And there has been no secret Temple discovered.

“But if you accept Tuvia Sigva’s location, then the Holy of Holies would have been
much farther south than where Warren’s Gate now sits.”

Johnson turned to them, expectantly, but Bohannon was drawing a blank, he didn’t know
where this was going.

“Okay, let me make it easy,” said Johnson, beginning to draw on his map. “Down here
are the Hulda Gates, in the south wall. The Triple Gate, the one to the east, had
tunnels leading up to the Temple Mount. We believe we just came through the meeting
hall of the Sanhedrin, that would have been above, higher than, the Hulda Gates, in
the vicinity of the Temple. And that’s where we found Meborak’s stellae with the master
code. So Abiathar had to have been in that Sanhedrin room. Here is Warren’s Gate over
here, on the Western Wall. Here’s the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa. If the Temple
sat in the space between the Dome and Al-Aqsa, it would have been in here.” Johnson
drew an oval on his map, between the two buildings. “Here is where the Hulda Gate
tunnels likely would have surfaced.” Johnson made a mark, that touched his oval. “There
was a Herodian street that ran along the western side of the Temple Mount, from the
Damascus Gate to the Pool of Siloam.” He drew in the street, touching the western
side of the oval. “With the Dome of the Rock on the north and the Al-Aqsa Mosque on
the south and the Western street on the west, there was only one way for Abiathar
to gain access to the area around the Temple’s location with the lowest level of risk,
from the southeast. As we have done.

“So, looking at the likely location for the Temple, where should we look for Abiathar’s
secret cavern?” Johnson asked.

Bohannon looked down at the map and wondered, if it was so simple, why they hadn’t
figured it out before.

“Look at your GPS,” said Johnson.

Rodriguez got to his quickly and held it up for all of them to see. A small, green
star flashed on and off. “Throw on the Temple Mount coordinates,” said Johnson. Rodriguez
punched in a few numbers, and an outline formed on the screen.

“We’re right here.” Rodriguez tapped the map, right on the oval, in the middle of
where the Hulda Gate tunnels should have risen to the surface of the Temple Mount.

Bohannon watched while a huge, cheek-to-cheek smile broke out all over Johnson’s face.

“That’s right, that’s right. We are in what is left of one of the passages that rose
from the Triple Gate, the eastern-most Hulda Gate, up to the Temple Mount. These passageways,
like everything else, were filled with the massive debris that occurred when the Romans
destroyed the Temple in 70
A.D.
Remember, every stone was thrown down and Herod’s Temple was enormous. That’s why
all of this stuff is underground. The Romans knocked it all down; the Muslims smoothed
it out and built again on top of the rubble. Two thousand years ago, we would have
been in the middle of a busy passageway. Today, we are hundreds of feet below the
surface of the Temple Mount.

“So, Mr. Rodriguez, since you appear to be more alert this morning than your near
relative, where would you say we should look for Abiathar’s cavern?”

“Holy Christmas, Doc,” spurted Bohannon. “We got posses breathing down our necks from
every direction, and you want to play twenty questions?”

Johnson looked deeply offended, wounded that Bohannon wouldn’t indulge what was obviously
a triumphant moment. “I’m sorry, Doc. My apologies, you’re doing great. So, where
do we look?”

With a nod of his head as absolution, Johnson swept up his map, grasped the still
glowing cyalume stick, and stood to his feet. “Gentlemen, follow me.”

Johnson turned on his heel and went back down the Hulda passage, hugging the wall
to his right.

It was as if they had been moving through the middle of a landslide. A seemingly impassable
wall of rubble rose to their left, filling most of the Huldah passage, the debris
precariously stacked above their heads, wedged against the wall of the Huldah passage
on their right. Johnson gingerly navigated the tight corridor and reached the space
where they had broken through the wall. The limestone walls of the Sanhedrin meeting
room facing him, Johnson barely broke stride.

He turned to his left and squeezed past the corner of the limestone block wall, into
a crevice about four feet high, between some of the fallen stones and the finished
block wall.

“Come along,” said a muffled voice.

Bohannon stood in front of the narrow opening. If Johnson had not disappeared into
this crack in the debris, Bohannon would never have looked at it twice. Rodriguez
measured the thin crevice with his eyes, took off his backpack, and slid it through
the opening in front of him. Then he lay down on his side, wriggled his body in several
contortionist positions, and finally slipped from sight.

Johnson was much thinner than Rodriguez. Rodriguez, younger and more athletic than
Bohannon, was also much thinner than Bohannon, particularly around the middle.

“I’m never getting through there,” Bohannon groaned.

He could hear the voice in front of him, chattering away, talking as much to the rocks
as to anyone else. And he could see the blue cyalume light that left a trail of illumination
bright enough for him to navigate without bashing his head. But that was all he knew
of Johnson, or his progress. At each turn, the Doc had moved on, waiting for no man.

Rodriguez would have kicked himself if his foot could have reached his butt. He had
forced himself through that tight space, wanted to show Tom he could do it, and now
his back hurt like . . . well, it hurt. It was a pain he knew; and a pain he knew
wasn’t going away.

“It’s hard to tell the difference in the debris.”

Doc’s voice drifted over the rocks from somewhere ahead.

“But there should be a difference. They were a thousand years apart.”

Rodriguez had quickly given up on the idea of pushing his backpack in front of him.
The space was too narrow—too irregular—it kept getting stuck. So now his backpack
rested on his right hip as, on his left side, he pulled, pushed and twisted himself,
foot by foot, along this narrow crevice. Where was Doc going?

“Oh . . . oh . . . excellent,” came from the blue light in the distance.

Rodriguez was grateful for two things, the four ibuprofen tablets he had just washed
down and the fact that he could sit, with his legs stretched out. He and Johnson were
catching their breath, each glad to be out of that snaking little crevice.

“That was part of the debris that must have come down when Abiathar collapsed the
entrance to the Temple cavern,” said Johnson, who was taking deep breaths and gnawing
on an energy bar. “He and his men could never have come through an obstacle like that.
And the floor is relatively flat. This must have been a much more open space in his
time.”

“Where are we, Doc?”

As Johnson unfolded his map, they could hear Bohannon grunting, cussing, and squeezing.
“It’s a good thing that crevice slopes downhill. Otherwise, he might never get through.

“Here, I would say we are here.” Johnson pointed to the Triple Gate. “But I believe
we are behind the gate—inside the gate—and lower than the gate. I believe this is
where Elijah, Abiathar’s father, decided to dig out his cavern. I admit, we may have
taken a wrong turn somewhere in our decisions. Perhaps they didn’t deal with that
lake of water, or maybe, at that time, there was no lake, or most likely, there was
more than one way to gain access to the cavern. But I have no doubt that both Elijah
and Abiathar used the meeting room of the Sanhedrin as the headquarters room for their
work. And if their desire was to have their Third Temple as close to the site of the
Second Temple as possible, without being discovered, this is where they would have
looked.”

Rodriguez wasn’t sold. There could be thousands of arguments that would be just as
valid, even if this Third Temple did exist. And he was beginning to have his doubts.
This whole crazy chase had just been a bunch of ignorant guys bumbling their way from
one fiasco to another. At least, that was one way to look at it.