The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (6 page)

“This staff is the last and only connection to the garden of Eden—Paradise in which man would live a perfect, content life in communion with God. The place of eternal life.”

Rizzo pulled himself away from the doorjamb and crossed the room to where McDonough held the long piece of paper. He tapped the symbol of the staff on the drawing. “This is what the Prophet’s Guard is hunting. They will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. It’s the only way they can guarantee victory for themselves. Right now, they don’t know where to look to find it.” Rizzo turned back to the room. “How long will that last? And can we risk that they won’t figure it out? Padre, why don’t you tell them the kicker, what you told me.”

Fineman tilted his head and scratched the back of his neck, a squirrely grimace twisting the edges of his mouth. “While there is much we know,” he said, choosing his words with care, “there are still many unanswered questions about the staff and its place in prophecy. Many believe that the plagues of Egypt are the same as the plagues that will be released during the Tribulation period. That the plagues of Exodus will be the same as the plagues of Revelation. But, assuming the staff
is
the power of the Ark, will the staff need to be returned to the Ark before the events of Revelation can transpire? Now, with ritual sacrifice having returned to the Temple of God on Mount Zion—albeit only once—it’s possible we are in the end of days. The return of Aaron’s staff to the Ark of the Covenant could be another of the precursors to the events of Revelation. Or would the resurrection of Aaron’s staff itself, whether used for good or evil, be enough to accelerate the end-times prophecy of Scripture?”

Deirdre Rodriguez rose from the futon and stretched her body from her red curls to her toes, attracting attention. “If I was an Islamic militant,” she said, her eyes surveying the room, “the last thing in the world I would want is for the power of the Ark to be returned to its home. These Islamists read the Bible, too. They know what is prophesied about them and their future in Revelation. Why would they take any chance that the Bible may be accurate?”

Tom shook his head and stretched his left shoulder, almost as much to sort out his thoughts as to ward off the weight of weariness that hung on his bones more heavily every hour. “So this is why none of us understood what we were involved in? This … quest … mission … call it what you will. This assignment that has us all in its grip and won’t let us go. It’s much bigger than the mezuzah and the scroll. It’s much bigger than anything we could have imagined. These relentless thugs, the Prophet’s Guard, and now whoever is behind the Muslim Brotherhood, are not pursuing the Temple under Temple Mount or the Tent of Meeting. They’re after Aaron’s staff—the true power of the Ark of the Covenant and potentially a weapon of unimaginable force. And we remain square in the path of these murderous fanatics.”

Bohannon twisted to the left to look at his wife. “It’s still not over.”

Annie, who had sat quietly beside Tom through the entire narration, was now on her feet. “Ronald, how do you know all this? You told us that nearly half of the Aleppo Codex was destroyed, including a good bit of the book of Jeremiah. How do you know what was written in the margins of a section that was lost?”

Fineman walked over to Tom and took the old book he had put in Tom’s hands earlier. He looked at its cover and hefted its weight. “Because there is a complete copy of the Aleppo Codex in existence. And I’ve seen it.”

The team all blurted out questions at the same time. Fineman held up the book as if trying to fend them off. “Wait … wait. It’s much too late to go any further. I’m an old man. I need my sleep. So does my wife. Tomorrow. I have something to show you tomorrow.”

“Reynolds is coming tomorrow,” Annie reminded them. “And for some reason he wants us packed and ready to go home. Rabbi, we’d better make it early.”

1:04 p.m., Washington, DC

The president and prime minister sat on opposite sides of the world, on either end of an encrypted, secure broadcast, but they were of one mind. Their revenge would leave a sovereign nation’s economy a wasteland for generations.

“When someone targets two of the most powerful men in the world for assassination—one in his own home—then that someone needs to pay, and pay dearly,” said Eliazar Baruk, the prime minister of Israel.

Jonathan Whitestone felt older than his years. The constant tension of the last few months, the attempted assassination, the gun battle outside Senator Green’s home in Virginia, the panic as a human wall of Secret Service agents hustled him into a safe room in the senator’s basement, now the final go-order for this destructive and dangerous raid on Iran—all took an exacting toll on his weakening heart. But there was no weakening in his resolve. The Iranian government was out of control, megalomaniac fanatics who had finally moved from empty denials of their nuclear intentions to a clear and present danger to Israel, the United States, even to world peace. Sanctions failed. Direct action was needed. Iran must be stopped. The assassination attempts on Whitestone and Baruk three days earlier interrupted their original timetable, but they still had in motion the means to devastate Iran’s economy, its capacity to threaten anyone.

“Some may be more than a trifle suspect when we strike back this quickly,” said Whitestone. Bill Cartwright, promoted to national security advisor when Whitestone purged his cabinet members following the near disaster surrounding the Tent of Meeting, was the only eyes and ears who would ever know of this conversation. They were locked into a secure communications room—with no recorders—deep in the bunkers under the White House.

“Let them speculate,” Baruk responded. The normally unflappable and dapper prime minister looked as if he hadn’t slept. His clothes were rumpled, his eyes heavy. “It took a few days, but there is now enough evidence in place to connect those hooded assassins to the Iranian mullahs.”

“Are the teams still in place?”

Baruk pushed back his shoulders as if to wish life into his bones. “Three teams at Abadan, three teams at Bandar-e Abbas—the refineries will be ash in minutes. All the necessary items are in place at Fordow and the national treasury in Tehran. We have even managed access to certain portions of the Natanz facility. Don’t worry, Jonathan, in twenty-four hours Iran will cease to be a threat to anyone. And their new president may have trouble keeping his position.”

Cartwright leaned in around the president, an old friend, and pressed toward the camera. “Mr. Prime Minister, what about the teams on the ground? What are their chances?”

“The chance of success is high. The chance for survival? The teams at the refineries we hope to pick up by submarine in the gulf. The devices are nearly all in place in Fordow and Natanz. They are set to go off at the same time. Our assets will be far away when the explosions occur. The gold depository … well, the gold depository is another story.

“We’ve been planning for this day for quite some time,” said Baruk, “long before you or the international community joined the call for Iran to cease its nuclear operations. We’ve sabotaged their centrifuges, taken out their scientists, even managed to deliver inferior grade concrete during their building boom at Natanz and Fordow. Those things slowed down the Iranians. But we knew this day was coming, and we’ve been patient and meticulous in the planning.”

Baruk ran a hand through his thick, curling hair. “But the team at the Central Bank … we just don’t know. It’s the most difficult assignment—near impossible to gain access, more difficult to get out. You don’t want to make it easy to leave a gold depository, do you? We tried hiding the devices in Iranian gold bars, but we couldn’t get the weight right with the bars bored out, and the gold is so dense it would muffle a good bit of the explosive, limit the contamination. There’s no place else to hide the devices in the depository.

“This has to be an inside job. The men are all native Iranians … long-time employees at the Central Bank. The devices are timed for just after shift-change, when the men are making their pickup inside the vault. There will be no time to escape. They knew the risk, the probable outcome. They volunteered anyway. Anyone inside that vault is a dead man.”

Whitestone was well into his first term when he and Cartwright came to the same conclusion: the Iranians were unyielding in their determination to create nuclear weapons. And to use those weapons against Israel. Whitestone was an early champion of economic sanctions, which crippled the government in Tehran and impoverished its people but failed to deter the mullahs in control. It was in Whitestone’s second term, when convinced only force would cripple the Iranian rush to nuclear capability, that he and Baruk began laying the groundwork of this most clandestine operation.

American B-2 stealth bombers were already in the air from Incirlik air base, circling over eastern Turkey, waiting for orders if they were needed. Their “bunker buster” bombs would not fully penetrate the facilities at Fordow or Natanz, but if the Israeli devices didn’t fire properly, the bombs could destroy some of the underground labs and leave a pile of rubble forty feet thick, enough to hold in any radiation that would be unleashed in the deeper labs.

More importantly, the federal courts and federal banking system were on notice to be prepared for immediate action. What action, they didn’t know. But before this day was over, every Iranian asset in the United States would be seized or frozen and evidence presented that Iran was behind the attempted assassinations of both Whitestone and Baruk. With the right amount of pressure, European banks would follow suit. And the Iranian government would be bankrupt.

9:22 p.m., Jerusalem

Bohannon needed to clear his head and unburden his heart. His memory was plagued by the dead, and the guilt was so stifling that at times he felt his lungs would simply stop working. Now Rizzo, Fineman, and McDonough had revealed this fantastic story about a book and a staff. It appeared as if Jeremiah—or whoever was at the root of this mystery—wasn’t finished with them yet. There was just too much to absorb.

“I’m not waiting for the cab. I’m going to walk back,” said Tom as they departed the rabbi’s house through the courtyard.

Joe Rodriguez’s arm was protectively wrapped around his wife’s waist. He looked back over his shoulder at his brother-in-law. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“We’re not safe in our own beds at home. What difference does it make?”

“Kallie’s place is on the other side of town.”

“Just a little over a mile as the crow flies. Look, I need the air. I need to think. And I can cut the distance by going through the market.”

“Well, I’m no crow,” said Rizzo. “I’m taking the cab.”

“If you’re walking, I’m walking.” Annie came up to Bohannon’s side. “We can talk on the way—try to make some sense of all this.”

Deirdre didn’t have the right shoes for walking. Joe pulled her into an embrace, kissed her gently, then separated himself from her, standing sentinel by Fineman’s gate. “Don’t think I’m going to allow the two of you to wander off by yourselves. People out there still want to do us harm.”

Dr. Brandon McDonough was laboring with jet lag, and elected to wait with Sammy and Deirdre for dispatch to send the rare taxi driver who worked on the Sabbath.

Tom, Annie, and Joe crossed Tavon Street to begin their circuitous route through the random streets of Jerusalem to the Bar Lev Road and Kallie’s apartment near Ammunition Hill.

From Fineman’s house, they had two choices. To make a long loop east, on Bezalel Road, across King George V Street, through the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, and down the Jaffa Road to skirt the Old City on the Hatzanhanim to the Bar Lev Road; or to cut through the vast, but closed, Machane Yehuda open market to the Hanevi’im, which would reduce their walking distance by half.

Bohannon moved at a brisk pace, his feet keeping tempo with the thoughts rampaging through his mind. While the theory about the staff was fascinating, the dominant images were snapshots of Kallie Nolan’s lifeless body in Sammy Rizzo’s arms and of the plain wooden casket, covered with an American flag and mounds of flowers, in the tranquil pathways of the Garden Tomb.

When they reached the Agrippas Road, Annie and Joe came alongside as they waited for a solitary delivery truck to pass, then crossed together, entering the quiet and empty open market, headed northeast.

When two men dressed in black stepped out from the side of a darkened vegetable stall, the veil of grief and guilt was swept from Tom Bohannon’s mind.

Bohannon nudged Joe with his elbow, grabbed his wife’s hand, and plunged deeper into the shadows and echoes of the empty Machane Yehuda.

“C’mon, this way. Quick.”

Running, his damaged shoulder in a sling and his battered body objecting to each stride, Bohannon led them down a narrow alley between the stalls.

“Tom … what are …” Annie’s halting words were trumped by Rodriguez.

“I saw one of them.”

Bohannon skidded to a stop as the alley opened to one of the main thoroughfares of the massive, covered market. “There are two more.” Breathing deep to slow the flood of adrenaline surging through his veins, Bohannon peeked around the corner of the empty stall in one direction. Rodriguez cast a glance the other way.