God's Lions - The Dark Ruin (7 page)

“Well, sir,” the young man continued, looking back at the others, “we were wondering if you could tell us about the code.”

“I take it you’re talking about the code in the Bible.”

“Yes, sir,” the student smiled. “That’s the one. We’d all love to hear the story from someone who’s actually experienced it.”

Leo felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of being able to engage young minds once again. “It would be my pleasure. Come on ... gather around.”

Leo paused as more students climbed from trenches and made their way over to join the group. “Let me see. Where do I begin? Do any of you know who Professor Lev Wasserman is?”

“He’s a famous Israeli archaeologist!” a girl with frizzy red hair called out.

“That’s right,” Leo smiled. “But in addition to holding a PhD in archaeology, he’s also a world-class mathematician and one of the world’s leading experts in group theory, a field of mathematics that underlies quantum physics. A few years ago, he was reading about the Genius of Vilna, an eighteenth-century Jewish sage in Lithuania who predicted 9/11 to the day and spoke about the possibility of a code being embedded within the Torah. Lev became fascinated with the subject and learned that, throughout history, many Bible scholars had been trying to prove that there was a secret code in the Old Testament. He convinced a group of scientists at the university in Jerusalem that they could find it using modern code-breaking software, and to their surprise, they did. Their work has been replicated by the code breakers at the National Security Administration in the United States using their most powerful computers, and their paper on the subject has passed academic peer review and has been published in leading scientific journals.”

“Doesn’t this code have the power to predict the future?” the red-haired girl asked.

“It’s complicated.” Leo lifted one foot up on a rock and leaned forward. “The first evidence of the encoding was discovered in the
Pentateuch
, the original five books of the Old Testament as they were handed down to Moses ... otherwise known as the Torah. The code only exists in Hebrew, because that was the original language of the Bible as it was first written. Evidently, sixty years ago a rabbi from Eastern Europe noticed that if he skipped fifty letters, and then another fifty, and then another fifty after that, the word Torah was spelled out at the beginning of the book of Genesis. He then used that same skip sequence again and spelled out the word Torah in the Book of Exodus. To his amazement, the word Torah was also embedded at the beginning of the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But that was as far as he got.”

A student in the back of the group raised his hand. “What happened?”

“Nothing until the invention of the modern computer,” Leo explained. “Lev and his team found additional hidden messages by using computers to alter the sequencing before scanning the pages both horizontally and vertically, like a crossword puzzle. That’s when they found words grouped together on the same page that mentioned historical events that occurred after the Bible was written. For instance, words like
airplane
and
Wright brothers
appeared together with phrases like
they will fly
and
first flight at Kitty Hawk
.

Leo paused as he felt the rush of joy he had always experienced when students were transfixed by his words. “To me the code is like God whispering in our ears,” he continued. “To date, Lev and his team have discovered passages referring to things like both World Wars, the Holocaust, men landing on the moon, 9/11, the Gulf War, even the exact date of the collision of the Shoemaker-Levi comet with Jupiter. All of these events were encoded thousands of years ago in the Old Testament. Allowing for all the mathematical variations, there’s no limitation to the amount of information that may be encoded within the Bible.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Cardinal,” the underfed-looking boy exclaimed, “but all of this sounds a little fantastical to me.”

Leo nodded. “That’s what I thought until I heard that Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds to ever grace this planet, believed there was a hidden code in the Bible. He even learned Hebrew and spent most of his life trying to find it, but he lacked the one essential tool that would have led him to its discovery—a computer. Think of the Bible as a cryptogram sent to us by God himself ... a cryptogram with a series of time locks that could not be opened until certain events came to pass. Obviously, one of these events is the invention of the computer. This one leap in technology has enabled scientists and cryptographers who’ve been working on the code to discover hidden messages placed there thousands of years ago by an intelligence greater than any that exists here on Earth. I’m convinced that there’s another Bible within the Bible. It’s like a massive puzzle in layers, similar to a three-dimensional hologram. Some believe the Bible itself is a computer program left to us by the Almighty, and there are an infinite number of combinations and permutations yet to be discovered. Even with all of our computers and code-breaking programs, no one could have encoded the Bible the way it was done thousands of years ago.”

“Just how much information is there?” a petite, doe-eyed girl asked.

“All of our past and all of our future. The name of every person who has lived before us, who is living now, and who is yet to be born. All of our greatest historical events, plagues, disasters, wars and future wars. All are encoded in the Old Testament.”

The red-haired girl twisted her lips as she looked up at Leo. “Sounds impossible, Cardinal.”

“Yes it does, but you’d better be prepared to argue with some pretty knowledgeable people who have done the research and proved its existence with a 99.998 percent probability. A group of renowned scientists who worked at the NSA actually set out to disprove the theory of the code, but instead, what they found sent chills up their spines. They all saw the hand of God at work.”

The thin young man stood and pulled at his scraggly beard. “Thank you, Cardinal. I think I can speak for all of us when I say it’s been an honor meeting you. I have just one more question.”

“Go ahead. I’m enjoying this.”

“Have you thought about using the code to locate whatever it is you’re searching for out here?”

“We have, but the code has been like a black hole when it comes to details about this area. One of the things people misunderstand is that sometimes you have to know what you’re looking for in order to find it in the code. I guess that’s God’s way of keeping us from knowing the future and trying to become godlike ourselves.”

Turning away from the group, Leo saw Morelli grinning at him. “I can tell you miss your teaching days, Leo.”

“That I do, old friend. They make me think, and that last question made me wonder why we haven’t thought to speak to the villagers who worked here for Eduardo.”

“I guess I’m getting old.” Morelli slapped his forehead. “That’s probably one of the first things we should have done. Abbas said the workers were all members of an extended Kurdish family who live up the road in the small village of Orencik. We can go there tomorrow.”

Looking at his watch, Leo nodded his head. “Tomorrow sounds good. I don’t see any point in spending any more time here today. Where did Mendoza get off too?”

“I’m right behind you,” Mendoza called out. “I heard what you just said, and I agree. We need a new plan and it’s getting late. Why don’t you follow us back into town? I think we could all use a shower and some hot food. I always think better on a full stomach.”

Dusting themselves off, the entire group trudged back to their cars, and soon the small caravan was headed back down the D400 highway toward the ancient city of Sanliurfa forty miles away. With its hot dry summers and cool wet winters, the city had been known by many names throughout history. Most locals still referred to it by the older name—Urfa, the name it had gone by since Byzantine days until it was changed in 1984 to Sanliurfa, meaning
Glorious Urfa
. Situated on a wide flat plain between the Syrian border and the Euphrates River, Urfa was said to be the biblical city of Ur of the Chaldeans—the birthplace of the prophet Abraham and possibly Job, although many historians place the city of Ur in southern Iraq. It had also once been called
Edessa
by the Greeks, home of the first holy Christian icon, a handkerchief on which Jesus wiped his face.

As with most Turkish cities the romantic old section of town was centered on an ancient bazaar where Arab and Turkish villagers dressed in traditional garb arrived every morning to sell fresh produce and other handmade wares. Exotic cooking smells drifted through the quarter, wafting through open windows, and as the line of vehicles entered the city and passed through the bazaar quarter, the occupants saw harried waiters carrying trays piled high with food to low-lying tables where they spread everything out on newspapers to be eaten with fingers. It was a far cry from the modern air-conditioned restaurants and apartment buildings that lined broad leafy avenues just a few streets away.

In this milieu of antiquity mixed with modernity, the line of vehicles continued on, passing through narrow streets into a quieter part of the city filled with traditional mud brick homes built around enclosed central courtyards that contained dripping stone fountains next to tiled urns filled with flowers. These little oases of domesticity provided a quiet respite away from the heat and noise of the streets outside, bringing a sigh of relief to the dust-covered group when they finally rolled to a stop and entered the large three-story house Mendoza had rented for their stay in the city.

After being shown to their rooms, Leo headed straight for the shower. Adjusting the temperature of the water to a level just below scalding, he immersed himself in the pounding stream for a full five minutes, and after lathering up, he could actually see the fine, orange-colored grit flowing from his body and circling down through the drain. When he finally felt clean, he inched the water temperature a few degrees cooler and rinsed off before stepping out and wiping the wet sand from his ears with a hand towel. It was a stark reminder of why he preferred doing his research in the comfort of a library, far from the heat and dust of the archaeological digs that Morelli always found so fascinating.

After pulling on a clean white dress shirt and a pair of gray slacks, he walked from his room out into an airy, red-tiled hallway and stopped to peer out over a cast iron railing into the shadowed greenery of the central courtyard below. Following the sound of voices tinged with laughter, he descended a set of narrow, white-washed stairs that curved downward in a tunnel-like spiral, until finally he stepped out into an enclosed space of towering white walls highlighted by subdued yellow lighting.

At the far end of the room, large oriental tapestries hung above a cave-like alcove lined with silken, multi-colored pillows that formed a wide seating area, and a fresh breeze on his face brought his attention to a row of Moroccan-inspired arches draped in white gossamer curtains that flowed in and out into the courtyard beyond, as if the room had lungs.

It felt as if he had stepped into another world—an ancient, magical, breathtaking respite from a long day filled with uncertainty, and he found himself wanting a drink, any drink, just as long as it was cold and made his nose feel numb after a few sips.

A gentle hand found his neck, and when he turned, he saw a familiar pair of liquid brown eyes staring up at him.

Evita Vargas giggled. “Hello, my love.”

“Evita!” Leo reached out and took her in his arms. Though it had only been a few months, it seemed like it had been years since he had last seen her. He felt lightheaded—a man past middle age, once again experiencing the schoolboy pangs of love usually reserved for the young. The air smelled sweeter, and there was a faint hint of music in the air that only he seemed to hear whenever she was around.

“Come on, dinner is waiting,” she said, leading him by the hand through the tall billowy curtains out into the courtyard where, under a star-filled sky, flickering candles painted dancing yellow patterns down the length of a long, linen-covered table. After they took their seats next to the others, a servant carrying a large tray began handing out ice-filled glasses containing a clear, sparkling beverage topped with wedges of lime and sprigs of green mint leaves.

“What’s this?” Leo asked.

“It’s a mojito,” Evita winked. “It’s a Cuban drink made from white rum, sugar, sparkling water, mint, lime ... all the yummy things you like. It was Hemingway’s favorite cocktail. I had a feeling you might need something with a little Latin influence this evening after digging around all day in a 12,000 year old megalithic temple.”

Stroking Evita’s long black hair, Leo exhaled slowly and sipped his drink. He felt totally satisfied to be here in this place at this time, living in the moment and not wanting to think about the next day as his nose grew slightly numb—a signal that the mojito was having the desired effect.

As trays of food began to flow from the kitchen, overpowering smells of cooking reminded Leo that he had not eaten for hours. Soon the table was filled with steaming ceramic dishes overflowing with
Midye dolmasi
, mussels stuffed with spiced rice and served with lemon. These were followed by several large serving bowls swimming with
levek pilakisi
, a Turkish seafood stew of simmering sea bass, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onion, and garlic.

Looking down the table, Leo saw Dr. Raul Diaz, his face highlighted by a flickering candle as he sat locked in an animated discussion with Morelli. Catching the Spanish scientist’s eye, Leo lifted his glass in his direction and smiled. With a blank expression, the doctor returned the liquid salute with a glass of red wine before resuming his apparent battle of wits with Morelli. As usual, Diaz was displaying his disdain for social niceties, but since he was one of the world’s leading experts in molecular biology, most people overlooked this one flaw in his behavior.

Mendoza had been right. They needed help from the Spanish team—all of them, for even though all of the Israeli members of the Bible Code Team were onboard the Carmela in the nearby Aegean Sea, they needed more boots on the ground here in Turkey. Somehow Mendoza and his team had managed to arrive just in the nick of time, and Leo was glad they were there.