The Brotherhood Conspiracy (12 page)

Feldberg was still toying with the letter opener, but his eyes were on the cigar. He picked it up and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Shomsky could tell keeping it unlit was a true struggle. “So, what happened to the Tent?”

“After the Ark was captured, the Tent of Meeting was taken down and removed to the city of Nob. Remember the story of David eating the shewbread? Scripture says David went into the house of God to eat the shewbread. That was the Tabernacle at Nob. Sometime after that, no one knows when, the Tent was moved from Nob to Gibeon. And it remained in Gibeon until Solomon completed the first Temple.

“And that’s where history loses track of the Tent,” said Feldberg. “We’re told that, when Solomon dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem, he brought up the Ark and the Tent of Meeting and all the sacred furnishings that were in it. And that’s the last word recorded in the Scripture about the Tent of Meeting’s existence. Not surprising, since the Tent of Meeting was, in effect, the sanctuary that moved with them. With Solomon’s Temple constructed, there was no longer any need for another Tabernacle. And it disappears from history. Gone. Poof.”

Feldberg was intently studying the tawny richness of the Cuban cigar between his fingers. Slowly, he raised his eyes and bathed Shomsky with a look of thinly veiled contempt.

“So, that’s the first challenge. Find it. And I can tell you that we’ve already started moving on that front. What’s the second?”

Feldberg picked up the letter opener. He idly tapped it against his index finger then pointed its tip toward Shomsky’s rumpled body. “The second challenge, my strong-backed friend, is picking it up.”

He took the unlit cigar, deposited it into the inside pocket of his impeccably tailored suit jacket, pushed himself to the front of the chair, and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk.

Once again, Shomsky felt like he was playing catch with a scorpion. A stab of adrenaline barely masked his fear.

“Because the Tent of Meeting the Israelites carried through the wilderness probably weighed over ten tons . . . twenty thousand pounds. It took six heavily loaded wagons to move the Tent. And the six treasures of the Tabernacle, such as the Ark and the golden altar of incense, were carried on platforms on the shoulders of the Kohathites—eight thousand men. So, tell me, how do you plan to smuggle the Tent and the Tabernacle into Jerusalem, even if you do find it?”

“We plan to bring it in by truck . . . make it look like building material for the Mount.”

Feldberg nodded his head. Shomsky could almost see him calculating the angles.

“That might work,” Feldberg said. Once again he fiddled with the letter opener. “And I’ve got a lot invested in Baruk already. I think it’s a fool’s errand . . . but tell Eliazar he will have his money and he can mount his search.”

Shomsky unfolded himself from the chair, anxious to be out of the billionaire’s presence.

“But . . .”

He stopped on his way to the door, knowing what was coming next.

“When I have need of a favor,” Feldberg said with the silken smoothness of a serpent, “many favors . . . Eliazar would be wise to accommodate my requests. Is that not right, Chaim?”

Despite the suffocating heat in the study, Shomsky shivered as he opened the door.

New York City

Tim Maybry pulled Bohannon into the Bowery Mission chapel. “C’mon, Tom, I know you’ve got a board meeting,” the construction manager argued, “but I need you to look at this. It will only take a minute—and you’ll thank me afterward.”

The Bowery Mission’s renovations had continued during Bohannon’s absence in Jerusalem, Maybry’s capable leadership and a willing group of workers performing miracles with the old, once dilapidated-looking building. With the precise care of world-class surgeons, not only did they remove decades of paint from the mission’s façade, revealing a startling number of architectural wonders hidden for years, but they also came up with an inventive solution for presenting a unified look to the three side-by-side, disparate, different-age buildings that were built with four styles of brick: pink mortar. Mixing red coloring with the mortar, the bricks of each building were re-pointed with the pink mortar, effectively blending the different styles and shades of brick into a cohesive whole.

This morning, Maybry clearly had another goal in mind. A head shorter than Bohannon, Maybry looked more like a school teacher than a construction company owner—slight of frame, tightly trimmed hair, horn-rimmed glasses constantly sliding down his nose. But he had earned his stripes with a string of arresting church buildings. This man knew his stuff. And Tom trusted his opinion.

“We’re just about done with repainting the vault roof,” Maybry said as they walked, hitching a thumb toward the arched ceiling of the chapel. “We were ready to reinstall the organ pipes—they did a beautiful job of restoration, by the way—when we found a real problem. Here . . . this is shorter.”

Maybry swung up on a ladder propped on the chapel’s altar. The ladder disappeared into a hole in the ceiling and Bohannon followed Maybry up the rungs. He knew where he was going, even though he wasn’t happy about being
this high off the floor. Heights were fear-filled. Now he was anxious about more than the board meeting.

Bohannon emerged into a dusty space behind the organ pipes. “Tim, what’s wrong?” But Maybry had already crossed the small room, ascended newly constructed stairs, and unlocked an unfinished wooden door. He waited for Bohannon.

They stood together on the top step.

“Look at the floorboards under the safe,” said Maybry.

But Bohannon already recognized the problem. The room was the office of the mission’s first president, Dr. Louis Klopsch, hidden for nearly one hundred years. On the far side of the room was a massive safe. When the office was discovered during the early stages of the renovation, this safe—more than eight feet wide, five feet high and a good three feet deep—yielded an incredible treasure trove of ancient, museum-quality books, manuscripts, and pamphlets, including the scroll—sealed inside an etched, brass mezuzah—that ultimately launched Bohannon and his motley team of secret-seekers on a quest that tested their courage, character, and faith.

“The boards under the safe have bowed into an unstable arc. The last time I was in here, two weeks ago, they were fine. Something we did when we were shoring up the old organ supports—we needed to do that to keep the organ pipes secure and make sure that one of them didn’t suddenly eject itself into the chapel—something caused a shift . . . something changed.”

Now Bohannon had another item for the board’s agenda.

“The safe has to come out,” Bohannon said. Then he looked at the size of the door, the steep steps, and the size of the hole in the floor. “This is going to be interesting.”

Bohannon turned to face Maybry. “I’m curious to see how the inventive talents of your crew will solve this problem,” he said. “I guess we’ll be talking more after the board meeting.”

He shot a glance into the small room, and said a prayer that the safe stayed right where it was until they figured something out. At least until the meeting was over and the board members left the building.

11

S
ATURDAY
, A
UGUST
8

Tel Aviv, Israel

It often dismayed the prime minister that his beautiful, sprawling home in Tel Aviv had been turned into a virtual fortress. Even the damage done by the recent earthquake disturbed him less than the loss of his idyllic retreat. When Baruk’s Kadima party had shocked the political pundits and secured the highest number of seats in the Knesset, Eliazar Baruk woke to find himself prime minister of Israel, titular head of a fragile coalition government, and a prisoner in his own home.

At least that’s how it felt now, looking out over the electrified fence, past the armed guards, and beyond the fortified security barrier that separated his long driveway from the rest of the street. He knew the security was necessary, but it stole the serenity from his home.

Baruk was on the veranda, rubbing a cold glass of iced tea against his brow, captured by the velvet aroma of gardenia rising from his garden, when his wife, Shakirya, escorted his guests into the warm afternoon sun.

“Levi . . . Lukas.” He shook their hands. “Thank you for coming. Some iced tea?”

Baruk guided his guests to chairs under the trellis as his wife filled their glasses from the pitcher on the sideboard. “Thank you, Shakirya.”

Baruk sat across from the two men, measured their unease, and weighed his words. These were trustworthy, proven men of action, not politics.

“We are going to rebuild the Temple Mount,” Baruk announced, without preamble. “But I am determined that, unlike the aftermath of the ’67 war, Israel
will not relinquish its sovereignty over the Mount. To ensure that sovereignty, Israel must allow no political vacuum for the Muslims to exploit. Our sovereignty over the Temple Mount must be clear and unquestioned.”

Evaluating the effect of his words, Baruk studied the men sitting in the dappled shade across from him. Clearly, they waited for instructions.

“There is only one thing that would ensure Israel’s control of the Temple Mount,” said Baruk. “The existence of the Temple in its rightful place atop Mount Moriah. But, should we attempt to begin construction of a new temple, the Arab states would never allow us the time to complete its construction. They would try to stop us. They would call for the world to stop us. We need another solution.”

Baruk held their gaze. No one flinched.

“I want you to find the Tabernacle Moses brought through the wilderness. I want you to bring it to Jerusalem, secretly, and be prepared to erect it atop the Temple Mount as soon as the reconstruction is complete.”

Baruk sat back in his chair, drank from his glass, and saw surprise register on the faces of Lukas Painter and Levi Sharp as they looked first at each other and then back at the prime minister.

Lukas Painter was director of Mossad, Israel’s relentless and feared international intelligence gathering force. Painter was as formidable as the organization he led. The gray stubble that covered his head gave accent to the chiseled cut of both his sculpted muscles and rock-hard jaw. Painter, a battle-scarred warrior, served four different prime ministers over the past fifteen years and still there was neither an ounce of doubt about his duty, nor an ounce of fat on his body.

Levi Sharp was director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security force, and the polar opposite of Painter. Sharp was recruited as a spook out of university and dispatched to Harvard where he earned his master’s in political science. During those summers, Sharp was an invited observer first at FBI headquarters in Washington and then at Interpol headquarters in Paris. Where Painter was larger than life, Sharp was nearly invisible. Slim, bland in appearance and dress, introspective by nature, and quiet by choice, Sharp tended to blend into the background. Only his eyes gave testimony to the Zionist zealot who flirted with fanaticism.

Baruk waited for their barrage of questions.

With a slight nod of his head, Sharp allowed Painter to ask the question. “You know where to start looking, don’t you?” asked Painter.

New York City

It was tough for Sammy Rizzo to find anyplace where he could be eye-to-eye with Kallie. Restaurants? He would need a kid’s booster seat. And forget going for a walk, or sitting on a park bench.

But Sammy was resourceful and determined. He would engage with Kallie on her own level, no matter what it took.

Plan. Adapt. Plan again. That was Sammy’s constant effort. New York City . . . Manhattan . . . was a tough enough place to survive. But for a little person who barely reached chest level on an average guy, New York was a challenge on the scale of Mount Everest. The only beneficial result of the Americans with Disabilities Act was that the city owned a fleet of kneeling buses, but even those were purchased not to help little people get on the bus but to make it easier to get wheelchairs onto the lift ramp.

Normally, these were annoyances that Sammy’s cultivated caustic personality would overcome and spit back in the face of the Big Apple. But now, with Kallie, all that had changed.

Size wasn’t a problem when they first met—Kallie Nolan doing research in the library on Bryant Park for her master’s in archaeology and Sammy ensconced in his specially designed library office where everything was designed to bring him to eye level. That’s how they first met . . . on equal terms. Sammy possessing the knowledge and resourcefulness Kallie required.

Now, living on a level plane with Kallie was of utmost importance to Sammy. When they were alone together, he even shed the wise-cracking clown persona that had served him so well since his childhood.

Sammy pushed the plastic container of cheese, crackers, and fruit back across the small, green metal table in Kallie’s direction. They were sitting in glorious shade, under the trees along the pathway on the downtown side of Bryant Park, that rectangular oasis of green grass and mature trees that brings grace to Manhattan’s manic midtown. Though out of the sun, they were still oppressed by the summer’s heat and humidity. The bite of charcoal smoke invaded the shade from a street vendor’s food wagon and the voices of many tongues floated between the leaves.

Sammy was perched atop a low brick wall, in just the right relationship to Kallie, who was sitting on one of the park’s green, wooden slat chairs.