The Solomon Key (26 page)

“What’s your name?” Scott asked, climbing in next to Mayhew.

As the sound of rotors suddenly materialized over Columbus, he answered, “Call me Malachi.” Then he said something in Hebrew and shut the door on Scott and Mayhew, ran around to the front passenger side, and climbed in. “Go,” he said to the driver.

The driver needed no prodding. He slammed on the gas and pulled away from the wreckage protruding from the building’s side. And when they were twenty yards away, one of the two suits sitting in the back pulled out a device and pushed its red button.

The mangled wreck disappeared into a massive fireball that brought half the building down on top of it, black smoke billowing upward into the morning sky and signaling the helicopters.

“What’s happening?” asked Scott.

“We were betrayed,” Malachi answered. “There was a mole. They were just waiting for us to get the ring. Using us.” He held the ring up in his hands, observing it as it gleamed in the morning sunlight.

“What did they want with us?”

“I cannot be certain, but I would assume they just wanted you out of their way. You interrupted their escape, so instead of allowing you to delay it, they just invited you along.”

He then realized the three men had been waiting for the elevator and not for them. “But how did they get Mr. Smith down into the truck?”

Malachi shook his head. “It was another man who murdered him and transported him to the vehicle. He used the gurney we brought your woman friend in on. We caught him coming back up in the service elevator. He was not planning on leaving with the other three.”

Mayhew was coming back to his senses now, blinking more frequently and looking around. “Where are we?” he muttered.

No one answered him.

Instead, three black helicopters descended on them, soldiers in black uniforms firing at them from their seated positions on either side of the chopper’s belly, their feet perched against the landing skids.

The driver swerved and punched the gas as Malachi leaned out the window and fired his assault rifle at the helicopters that were attempting to drop down and cut them off. He struck two of the soldiers, and they dropped to the street, one landing on a parked car and exploding its windows.

“Turn right!” yelled Malachi.

The agent pulled the wheel hard to the right, and they shot down an alley just as the hovering helicopters opened fire on them, sparks flying from prolonged brushes up against the alley’s sides.

The black helicopters climbed back into the sky for a better view, and so the Mossad driver kept the Suburban roaring through more alleyways and small side streets, hiding between large buildings that would obstruct the helicopters’ view.

“An underground parking garage,” Malachi instructed. Immediately, the driver shot out of their current alley and turned left onto a two-way street. They could see the helicopters circling in the air a few blocks to their right.

“Were they Mossad?” Scott asked, referring to his previous captors.

He nodded. “Zionists who will stop at nothing to have the ring.”

“Even if it means killing their own?” Though he realized as the words came out of his mouth that the same could be said of Malachi.

Malachi nodded, an all-serious look beaming from his eyes. “It is nothing new to the Jews, to be fighting amongst ourselves.”

Mayhew coughed.

Scott leaned forward. “The helicopters?”

“NAU military. I doubt they know who we are or what we have.”

“But this vehicle has government plates.”

“No, not this one. Only fake plates meant to deter the curious, not fool the investigator.”

Scott sighed and touched his aching head. “Where are we going?”

“I told you, to meet someone who will help you.”

“Where?”

“Here. In Ohio.”

He wasn’t about to object at this point. “What are you going to do with the ring?”

Malachi looked back out the window as the helicopters spotted them and began swinging around in an approach pattern. “Take it to my boss.”

They shot into a parking garage and followed the ramp down into its sublevels, passing parked cars on both sides. The driver slammed on the brakes and brought them to a stop in an empty parking slot. The question now was whether or not the men in the choppers would come after them.

The four Mossad agents jumped out of the Suburban and ran back to where the ramp circled up to the street. They ran until they could see sunlight shining through the entrance above them. And, sure enough, ropes began dropping down in front of the opening, men in black uniforms descending and landing on their feet with weapons raised. But they couldn’t see into the darkness of the garage, couldn’t see the Mossad agents positioned four across and waiting for them.

Operating from a silent count, the Jewish agents opened fire simultaneously, the two on the ends working from the outside in and the two in the middle from the inside out. The NAU soldiers didn’t stand a chance and went down instantly as the sound of machine gun fire rebounded throughout the concrete tomb and set off scores of car alarms.

Before another, wiser, group of soldiers could start rolling grenades down the ramp toward them, Malachi led the men back to the Suburban. “Come on, Scott,” he called into the vehicle once he reached it. “We are getting a new ride.”

Tires screeched, echoing loudly as the two sports cars flew forward, up and out the other side of the garage, leaving behind a group of black-uniformed soldiers to take out their frustration on the abandoned Suburban.

Scott and Mayhew were in a black 2020 Mustang with Malachi behind the wheel while the other three agents traveled ahead of them in an older, red BMW. And though there were no black helicopters waiting for them on this side of the building, it was only a matter of time before the microchips in the E-plates signaled the theft of the two cars to the authorities.

“Do you have the books I gave you?” Malachi asked Scott.

“Yeah.”

“Perhaps you should look through them. It will be about a two hour ride.”

Scott didn’t feel like reading because his head felt like it was being jack-hammered, but he knew he wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon either. He decided to give it a try. Sliding
Tobit
out of his pocket, he opened to page one and tried to ignore the blood that was dripping down his head and onto his shirt.

29

M
alachi drove the stolen Mustang down East Broad Street and then made a right onto South Grant Avenue. Three quarters of a mile later, the city was behind them.

“Are you okay?” Scott asked Mayhew from the front.

“I’m fine,” he answered, leaning back into the seat and tilting his head back. “I have a headache.” Then he opened his eyes and returned Scott’s stare. “The guy in the back of the Suburban… what happened? What’s going on?”

And Scott remembered that Mayhew hadn’t been in the room with Mr. Smith, that he didn’t know about Texas or the President. Not any of it. So for the next twenty minutes, he brought Mayhew up to speed. After which Malachi ran through the conflicting agendas existing within the Mossad and the differing perspectives pertaining to the Holy Land — not that the Mossad itself was divided, but that some of its agents had higher allegiances to other religious dogmas than did the secular state.

Mayhew seemed like he was trying to absorb it all.

“So where are we going, exactly?” Scott inquired of their driver. Though Malachi had repeated pretty much the same summarization Mr. Smith had given him, Scott recognized a fatal flaw in the application of this Orthodox belief, a certain hypocrisy that seemed to undermine its said conviction — namely the refusal to use force in order to accomplish anything, something that Malachi and his three friends had just disregarded when executing their Jewish brethren. But Scott just tucked that unsettling thought away for now.

“Athens County. It is about ninety miles southeast of here, near West Virginia.”

West Virginia. Wasn’t that where they said the CIA wanted to take him? To that DARPA facility?

The red BMW continued ahead of them, its brake lights yet to shine through the morning sunlight, and by the time Scott set one of the old books on his lap, the landscape outside the window had already gone from city to suburb and was now making the transition to rare farmland.

Book of Tobit, chapter 3.

There was a summarization of the text before a verse-by-verse translation spilled over onto the next two pages. Scott skipped through it, paying attention only to words that were either underlined or circled, presumably by the priest. He found a few references made to the
Testament of Solomon
scribbled beside the body of the text and then an excerpt from Milton’s
Paradise Lost:

Better pleased

Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume

That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse

Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent

From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.

- Paradise Lost , iv. 167-71.

Scott ran his finger down a list of names that followed Milton’s excerpt. In the margin near the top of the list was written its explanation.

References to the Catholic authenticity of Tobias.

The list started with St. Polycarp and a date. AD 117. Next to it read,

Cites Tobit 4:10 and 12:9 (Ad Philippenses).

That’s how the whole page was laid out. A name, a date, and the references used.

Deutero-Clement, St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Athanasius, St. Cyprian, St. Ambrose...

Tobias was present in Old Latin Version from AD 150 until replaced by Jerome’s Vulgate. Earliest canonical lists contain Tobias (Council of Hippo, Councils of Carthage, St. Innocent I, St Augustine). Fourth and fifth century Septuagint manuscripts contain Tobias. Council of Trent confirmed canonicity of Tobias (April 8, 1546) as well as Vatican (April 24, 1870).

Scott looked up from the pages and stole a glance back at Mayhew. He appeared to be sleeping.

“You read this thing?” Scott asked, turning his attention to Malachi.

Malachi looked over. “I am familiar with
Tobit.
”

“So why do you think Mr. Smith wanted me to read it?”

But Malachi only shrugged. “His name was Benjamin by the way.”

“Did he know the priest?”

Malachi nodded. “Very well.”

Scott was confused. “Did they share the same—”

“The priest was Catholic. Obviously there existed differences of opinion. But as far as the ring was concerned, they wanted the same thing.”

“For it to disappear.”

“To keep it from the wrong hands.”

“And whose hands are those?” Scott asked.

“Everyone else’s.”

He thought about it, and some dots began to connect. “The priest was working with Benjamin.”

“Yes.”

“Against Daniel.”

He nodded. “Daniel was a Zionist. He wanted to use the ring as a means to reestablish Israel, to bring the Messiah.”

Scott touched his sore head. “And you think the idea is blasphemous?”

“Like Benjamin told you, some of us Jews are still hoping in a future prophetic fulfillment, and we see all these human efforts as simply delaying it.”

Scott was about to bring up the seeming contradiction that was bothering him when Mayhew’s voice suddenly entered the discussion.

“I don’t understand, the Zionist movement seems to be the process of prophetic fulfillment.”

Malachi’s eyes rose to the rear-view mirror. “We do not believe in any process. We believe that Messiah will return and do all things at once. Our Zionist brothers, both secular and religious, are planning on destroying the Dome of the Rock and building another Temple there. But the Temple they build will have to be destroyed in order for Messiah to build
His
Temple when He comes. The Temples that have already stood in Jerusalem have fallen victim to God’s judgment, and if another Temple is to be built, it too will face the same end. Perhaps our conquest to gain back what God has taken from us is the very grounds for such punishment.”

Mayhew leaned back again. “So Daniel was working for Benjamin, and the priest was working for Benjamin, but Daniel and the priest were working against each other?”

“Benjamin was a top ranking Mossad agent whose orders came from the secular state of Israel. All Mossad agents work for the secular state. But there have developed religious cliques within the agency, cliques not all in agreement with the direction the secularists wish to take us. But the religious factions are in disagreement with each other too. Daniel reported to Benjamin but was acting according to his own interests, not aware that Benjamin had his own agenda. That was the priest’s role, to keep an eye on Daniel and his findings.”

The car was silent for two miles.

Finally, Mayhew asked, “Who are we going to see?”

“His name is Isaiah. He knew Benjamin.”

“Jewish?”

A nod. “Messianic Jew.”

Mayhew squinted. “I thought the Orthodox considered Messianic Jews to be heretics and apostates.”

“They do. The relationship Benjamin and Isaiah shared was unique. They did not let their religious differences interfere with the love they had for each other.” Malachi saw the startled looks and quickly shook his head. “They were brothers.” And then he set his eyes back on the road and drove on in silence.

After a moment of staring out the window in consideration, Scott returned his gaze to the book in his lap and started reading where he’d left off.

Testament of Solomon

Book of Tobit

Haggadic Legend

The Asmodeus in TESTAMENT and the Asmodeus in TOBIT seem to be the same as the “Ashmedai” of rabbinical literature. The Haggadah relates that Solomon did not know how to shape the blocks of marble without using an iron tool (Ex 20:25,26). His wise men urged him to obtain the “Shamir” (a worm that could cleave rocks). But not even the demons knew where the Shamir could be found. However, they reasoned that Ashmedai (Asmodeus), King of the Demons, knew of the place. So they (the demons) told Solomon of the mountain where Ashmedai dwelt and the manner of life he conducted there…