The Sacred Cipher (21 page)

The men sitting across from him looked like they had just been caught stealing hubcaps.
Larsen’s summary made their findings appear ludicrous.

“Yeah,” said Rizzo. “Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

“Actually,” said Larsen, his voice picking up, “no, it isn’t stupid at all. I don’t
know if what is written on the scroll is true. But it certainly is possible.”

“What! What are you saying?” exclaimed Bohannon, echoed by the others in the room.

“Oh, yeah, it could be there,” said Larsen, leaning his elbows against the small conference
table to close the distance between him and the others. “And it’s not far-fetched
to believe that, if it is there, no one has ever found it.”

Recently slipping into his forties, Winthrop Larsen was medium in many ways—medium
height, medium weight, medium features. His wire-rim glasses and short, auburn hair
added to his bookish look. But there was nothing medium about the thrill Larsen felt,
the adrenalin rush that had his body buzzing. He may have been standing in a small
conference room on the third floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on
New York City’s Fifth Avenue, but his heart and mind were trying to pierce the mysteries
of the Temple Mount.

“Winthrop, I’m stunned,” said Johnson. “Obviously, your comments are encouraging,
although I never really expected anyone to take any of this seriously. But how can
this message be possible?”

The team members each arranged for half a day off so they could have a late lunch
and meet with Larsen in a conference room at the library. Now he was going to test
their endurance. “Get comfortable,” said Larsen, “because this will take a little
bit of time.

“The entire area around Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, is comprised of Cenomanian
limestone. It’s a sedimentary rock that behaves very strangely when water and pressure
are applied. In laymen’s terms, it melts. This result is called
karstic
. When rainwater seeps into the ground, the limestone melts, though ever so slowly,
with a honeycomb of tunnels and caves forming naturally.

“In the nineteenth century, Charles Warren discovered a large, vertical shaft that
went deep underground in the City of David, the rocky crag upon which the ancient
city of Jerusalem was founded. Recent excavations discovered another karstic cave
adjacent to Warren’s shaft, which is big enough to hold twenty to thirty people.

“The Gihon Spring,” said Larsen, warming to his lesson, “ancient Jerusalem’s main
water source, is also a karstic spring. The route that Hezekiah’s tunnel followed
was originally formed by an underground karstic stream.

“Basically, karstic caves, tunnels, and cisterns played a significant role in Judean
antiquity, and it’s likely that the Temple Mount is riddled with these things. Hang
on to that thought, because it’s important.

“The interior of the Temple Mount is a source of hundreds of legends, but little concrete
scholarship. There is a great boulder in the center of the Dome of the Rock, the foundation
stone. Jews believe the foundation stone is the point from which the entire world
was created. Muslims believe the foundation stone was put in place by the angel Gabriel
and is home to the ‘well of souls.’ It’s all a mystery because the Muslim Authority—the
Waqf—won’t allow anybody underneath the Mount.”

Rodriguez interrupted Larsen’s lesson. “Winthrop, if the Temple Mount is really a
mass of tunnels and caves, how in the world did it support a massive Jewish temple
when it was there? How does it support the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque
and the thousands of people who come there in pilgrimage? Why doesn’t everything just
fall into a huge sinkhole?”

“That’s a good question, and one that the Jews would have had to answer before they
could ever erect a temple as large as the one that was there in Jesus’ time.

“The answer,” said Larsen, “is that the temple of old and the Islamic shrines of today
are not actually constructed on the Temple Mount. They are actually constructed on
a huge, stone platform that was built by King Herod two thousand years ago.”

He stepped to the whiteboard and began to sketch his explanation. “Herod’s platform
is three hundred feet wide, in its time, the largest in the world. If the platform
was supported by Mount Zion only, it would tip over once anything of size was built
on it. So Herod constructed a series of arches under the platform and also built four
huge, stone, retaining walls to support the outer edges of the platform around the
existing, natural hill. Then he filled in the area between the walls and the hill
with stone, rocks, dirt—anything they could find and squeeze into the space.

“Herod was also extravagant in his use of water,” said Larsen. “Herodian cisterns
were man-made and elaborate, not only meant to capture drinking water for Jerusalem,
but also to gather enough water for Herod’s swimming pools, decorative pools, and
fountains.”

Larsen turned from the board and leaned against the edge of the conference table.
“In Judea, collecting water and saving water were a matter of life and death. Torrential
rainfall in Israel can fill a lake or create a rushing river in a matter of minutes.
In the desert, one significant rainfall can supply a small town and irrigate its crops
for nearly a year. Creating cisterns, whether plastering over existing karstic caves
or carving out man-made, decorated pools, was critical. So we know that the Jews of
the eleventh century, like their ancestors long before Christ, had the engineering
and construction skill to create cisterns, caverns, or causeways of almost any size
they desired.”

Larsen paused, making sure he had everyone’s attention. It was an unnecessary tactic.

“Gentlemen, it is certainly possible that the Jews of the eleventh century could carve
out a great cavern in the limestone under the Temple Mount. But what is more important
is that they probably didn’t have to. In a region that already has many natural caverns,
it might be much wiser to use an existing one, or at least enlarge a smaller one.
There would certainly be a lot less debris to discard.

“Your research—Spurgeon’s letter, Schwartzman’s connection to Elgar, Abiathar’s history,
not to mention the violent opposition you have encountered in your search—appears
to validate the authenticity of the scroll. So it’s my belief,” said Larsen, “that
the only remaining question is not whether the Jews could have created a place for
the Third Temple. The question is, does it exist?”

Bohannon smiled.
This is like the Fellowship of the Ring. Something tells me we’re about to embark
on a journey
.

Larsen was engaged with other members of the team in speculation about the Mount,
tunnels, and other topographical information. Bohannon remained in the background,
observing the group, sifting through what he had heard thus far, replaying the message
of the scroll in his mind, and trying to connect the dots.

“Winthrop, I have a question for you,” Bohannon stated over the conversation. The
chatter stopped, and heads swiveled in his direction. “And there is really only one
question. How do we get ourselves under the Temple Mount to find out if anything is
hidden there?”

Uncertainty joined them in the room. Uncertainty about the implications of what they
were hearing, its cost and its consequences.

“There is only one way for us to discover whether the message of the scroll is true
or a hoax,” Bohannon announced. “We need to go and look. And we can’t leave this search
for somebody else. Only God knows what might happen if the temple exists and it were
manipulated for political or personal agendas. That could be a disaster.

“I don’t know about these chaps, Winthrop, but I’m expecting to take an extended vacation
in Jerusalem at the earliest possible moment. What do I need to know, and where do
we go from here?”

Immediately, all the mouths were speaking at once.

An hour and a half later, after Rodriguez had gone to the deli across 42nd Street
and returned with pastrami and Swiss on rye and a variety of Snapples, they were once
again gathered around the whiteboard as Larsen tried to give them a visual of what
they were up against.

“You are facing a very difficult challenge,” said Larsen, gathering up several different
colors of dry erase markers, “actually, many difficult challenges. First, you have
to get into Jerusalem. Not a difficulty in itself for men traveling on business. But,
men with a load of underground equipment may draw some attention. And attention is
going to be your enemy.

“How do you get near the Temple Mount? How do you investigate the Temple Mount? Greater
yet, how do you get under the Temple Mount without drawing attention to yourselves?
I won’t even bother to address how you’re going to get out, or what you’re going to
do if the thing is there. But let’s just say you get yourselves under the Temple Mount
somehow through one of the tunnels. Then what? Where do you go? How do you find your
way around, assuming you can get around under there? How do you locate a temple that’s
remained hidden for a thousand years?”

Larsen shook his head. “I just don’t know.” He gazed thoughtfully at the whiteboard
for a minute. “But perhaps we can narrow things down a bit.

“For what you are considering, perhaps the most important event came in 1867 when
the Turkish/Ottoman authorities gave permission to a British archaeologist and explorer,
Charles Warren, to explore the few tunnels they already knew existed beneath the Temple
Mount. Their conditions were that he would work only during the day and only under
the supervision of their officials. And that he would reseal each tunnel, close up
every hole, once he concluded the dig.

“But Warren was a very ambitious young man,” said Larsen. “He bribed his guards to
give him freedom at night and, without the knowledge or consent of the Turks, began
his own, independent search under the Temple Mount. From inside the existing tunnels,
Warren and his assistant dug new tunnels under the Temple Mount. To avoid detection,
they closed the tunnels behind them as they went.”

“Yo,” snapped Rizzo, “that doesn’t sound very healthy. Sounds like they were trapping
themselves underground. Not too bright, if you ask me.”

“Unfortunately for his assistant,” said Larsen, “that is exactly what happened. The
man died in a cave-in during the process, and Warren was forced to leave his body
where it lay.

“Warren, however, uncovered two points of curiosity,” said Larsen. “Now, you must
remember that nearly two thousand years of history passed from the time of Herod and
his great temple to the time of Warren. Jerusalem was sacked, destroyed, and rebuilt
several times. So what was ground level in Herod’s time was now underground in Warren’s.

“His first discovery is called ‘Warren’s Gate.’” Larsen began to sketch the inside
of a tunnel. “It is a small gate or window sealed shut with stone bricks and mortar.
Warren concluded that the gate led to the underbelly of Herod’s Temple. Nearby, Warren
made his second discovery—an alcove or cave, which he theorized was adjacent to the
Holy of Holies of Herod’s Temple. During Muslim control of Jerusalem, the alcove was
used by Jews seeking a place of prayer near to the now-destroyed temple. Somewhere
in time, both the alcove and the gate were sealed by authorities, and eventually,
their existence forgotten . . . until Warren.

“Over the last hundred years, Warren’s Gate and its alcove were not only the subject
of numerous theories but also the flashpoint for many crises. Rumors abounded in 1911
that British excavators had secretly tunneled underneath the Dome of the Rock and
uncovered and absconded with the temple treasures. In the early 1990s, an attempt
by archaeologist Dan Bahat to secretly make an opening in Warren’s Gate nearly caused
a major war.