Destiny

FIFTEEN

The next morning, Marcus took a taxi to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Library and abruptly stopped when he entered the front door. The stained glass windows were like none he’d ever seen. He stood in the cool of the lobby and stared at the far wall. The stained glass rose from floor to ceiling, three separate panels at least thirty feet wide. The primary colors were blood red, blue and chalk white. But it wasn’t the colors that caught Marcus’s eye — it was the images, abstract yet distinct in shape and form. Floating planets. Half-moons. Symbols of the universe layered with what looked like a page of Hebrew text.

There were three rows of theater-style seats in the lobby. Five people sat in the front row, looking at the mammoth glass as if it were a motion picture screen.

“Many consider it Ardon’s finest work.”

Marcus turned around, and Jacob Kogen smiled, his pale face filled with vigor. Red and blue light filtered through the images on the stained glass and reflected off his glasses.

“Mr. Marcus, I’m Jacob Kogen. Welcome to Jerusalem! Welcome to Israel. I trust you slept well and that your journey yesterday with Elam was comfortable?”

Marcus smiled. “Yes. It’s my first time, but somehow I feel as if I’ve been here before. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen so much of this city on television and in pictures.”

“Indeed.” Jacob glanced to the stained glass. “I would imagine you haven’t seen that artwork before, however.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“The artist was Mordecai Ardon. Many consider this his masterpiece. After he painted the glass, Ardon dedicated the windows to Isaiah’s vision of eternal peace. He used his talents to paint scenes from the Hebrew text found in the Kabbalah.”

“I wasn’t aware there were scenes in the Kabbalah.”

Jacob chuckled. “Not in the literal perspective, perhaps, but in the spiritual one.” Jacob pointed to the painting in the center. “Here, Ardon, following the Kabbalah, seemed to be visualizing God as the all-encompassing force, controlling everything in reality. All the world’s forces descend from this upper power. Some of these we know, such as gravity and electricity, but the insight of the Kabbalah speaks of higher powers that remain hidden to us. They may have remained hidden to Isaac Newton as well. What if Ardon captured them in there? What does the story on the glass tell us?”

Marcus said nothing. He studied the images, the sun rising beyond the windows, changing their color and look. The people seated in the front row stood, snapped a picture of the stained glass and left the lobby for the parking lot.

Jacob said, “I’ve seen people, especially those who have traveled a great distance, sit here for hours, mesmerized, viewing the art. Come, Mr. Marcus. Let me show you our research room. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to have you as our guest.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. This science is a branch I’ve never seen or done.”

The room was near the back of the library. It was a deep area filled with white boards, computers, plasma screen monitors, filing cabinets and ancient manuscripts, many under glass. Two people, a man and a woman, sat at computer screens and typed on keyboards. They scarcely looked up as Jacob escorted Marcus to the far side of the room, stopping next to a long table filled with file folders. In the center of the table was a cleared area with a single folder, magnifying glass and a gooseneck lamp.

Jacob said, “This is where my colleagues and I have spent the last few weeks analyzing what we believe are the last of the lost Newton papers. We have hundreds of Newton’s work scanned on digital files. I photocopied the one with your name and sent it to you.”

“It may be my name, but it doesn’t mean it’s me. I’m not the guy Isaac Newton had in mind when he wrote it.”

Jacob smiled with his eyes and gestured to a chair next to the table. His face ignited with hope, his eyebrows arched, and lights from the computer screens trapped in his blue eyes. “Please, sit. Let’s talk.”

Marcus sat and Jacob pulled up a chair in front of him.

“Mr. Marcus, may I call you Paul?”

“Of course.”

“Paul, please call me Jacob. Your name, Marcus…were you raised Jewish?”

“No. My father’s parents practiced the faith. They died when I was a child. My father became religious when he was drinking, and he was definitely non-denominational. My mother was the opposite. She could quote scripture but couldn’t communicate.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They died in a fire. I was young, thirteen. I was raised by my maternal grandmother.”

“I didn’t mean to pry. It’ll become quite obvious to you that Isaac Newton was a deeply religious man. He believed he was appointed by God to interpret, not so much the Bible, but the prophecies planted in it. Sort of like seeds. Newton wanted to harvest them for the good of mankind. Maybe he did.”

“I have no illusions.”

Jacob smiled. “You will have any and everything here at your disposal. You can begin, if you want, by going over the latest file, the lost papers. There are twenty-four pages in it. Through the years, we’ve received lost pages from Newton’s papers that were auctioned in 1936. A Biblical scholar, Abraham Yahuda, gave the majority to us after his death in 1969. What you see in front of you showed up last month.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“Paris. A woman made the donation. She’s the granddaughter of a Frenchman who was at the same auction in 1936. I have been using the whiteboard near the table to see if any of the new papers can add pieces to the step code we’ve used. We originally began with the Torah, the first five books of Moses. Hebrew is read from right to left on the page. We remove all spaces from the words, leaving a continuous string of letters. We have tried dividing this into sections and rows of letters, and then using an equidistant letter spacing sequence, ELS, correlated to Hebrew calendars and Biblical events to see if we could unlock information. We choose a starting point with any letter, skipping numbers, using intervals of seven, fourteen or twenty-one spaces, going forward for positive information, and backward for negative codes.”

“What have you found?”

“One example is the names of seven rabbis written in code a thousand years before their births.”

“Do these codes predict the future?”

Jacob smiled. “That’s the challenge. To research codes in the Bible, you need to insert information, known information. But, for the future, thus far, it has been impossible to extract information because we don’t know the future.”

“Have you found any relation to the ELS model and numerology, or for that matter, theology?”

“No, not yet. Although, in poring over Newton’s papers, he seemed obsessed with the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Matthew, John and Revelation. He was using math he invented, calculus, and early quantum physics to apply to the Bible.”

Marcus looked across at a long mathematical equation that took up two thirds of the large whiteboard in front of the table.

Jacob said, “Would you care for some refreshments, tea or water?”

“No thanks.”

“Then you’ll excuse me for a minute. My plumbing isn’t as robust as it once was.” Jacob grinned and left the room. Marcus stood back for a moment to take in the entire board. He studied the partially finished hypothesis. Then he stepped forward, picked up a black marker and began working the problem.