Destiny

NINETY

The morning light brought the extent of damages from the earthquake. Israeli authorities estimated that the destruction would cost more than three billion dollars to repair. At least seventy-nine people were dead and dozens more missing and feared dead. Aftershocks were felt as far west as Cairo, Egypt, and they spread into the western section of Iraq.

Alicia said, “I spent most of the night in Jonathon Carlson’s sewer. I need a very hot shower. I’ve uncovered further connections…links that substantiate a pattern, a legacy of involvement in the Middle East and much of Europe for a long time.” She handed Marcus a notepad. “I jotted down a bullet-point summation.”

Marcus took the notepad and read silently. After a minute, he looked up at Alicia. It all makes sense…oil n guns…all comes together. Israel is in the crosshairs, and they don’t know it or won’t recognize it. Maybe they will now.”

“There’s civil unrest, protests going on in most of the countries in the Middle East, all but Iran. The Internet and social sites have opened younger faces and minds to what’s outside the insular bubble that the kings and dictators have erected since World War II. Autocratic rulers are toppling from Egypt to Oman. The unknown is who will gain control and what will their relationship be with the West — with Israel?”

Marcus nodded. “Especially Israel.” He reached for his phone and punched in numbers. “I wonder if cell towers are still standing.”

“I’m getting strong Internet reception.”

After a half dozen rings, Jacob Kogen answered. “Are you okay, Jacob?”

“Yes, Paul. We’re safe. Where are you?”

“Here in Jerusalem. I’m at a hotel, but I’ll be leaving soon, if taxis or shuttles are running. The rental car was destroyed.”

“The library and university have very little damage.”

Marcus looked at the television screen, the channel on BBC International, to see reporters scattered all over Jerusalem doing live broadcasts, most via satellite phones.

“Paul, the university is on your way to the airport. Can you stop in a for few minutes? I have something I need to share with you.”

“Okay, I’d like to brief you on something, too. It’s the reason, I hope, that I was brought over here.” Marcus disconnected, walked across the room, and wedged the Beretta in the small of his back, under his belt.

Alicia looked up. “What’s going on, Paul?”

“We’re leaving, but before we go, we have to make an impromptu stop.”

Inside the library at the Hebrew University, in the lobby near the Ardon stained-glass windows, Marcus introduced Alicia to Jacob Kogen. Jacob said, “I’m saddened that the Old City has been taken to its knees in the aftermath of the earthquake. We shall rebuild. I hope your next journey here meets you with calm and the damage done to Jerusalem is no longer visible.”

“Thank you, Jacob,” Alicia said. “My prayers are with the victims of the disaster and their families. Those windows…the stained glass is so beautiful. It reminds me of Chartres.”

Jacob smiled. “The panel on the right is from Isaiah 2:3–4. Jacob shifted his eyes to Marcus. “Paul, you must leave Israel. Let’s talk in the research room. Nathan Levy is convinced you are working for Iran. He believes that you had something to do with the stepped-up operations of their nuclear program.”

Marcus said nothing, looking at the white board beyond the desk piled with Jacob’s paperwork. The mathematical problem Marcus solved was still visible in the dry erasable ink. “Jacob, you’re going to have to trust me here, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I did nothing to compromise the security of Israel. But, for your own safety, the less you know the less that can hurt you. Alicia’s niece, Brandi, and her fiancé were being held by Iran. Adam was released. Brandi is still there. I’m doing everything I can to free her and still not do anything to create a nuclear buildup. Do you believe me?”

“Yes, Paul. I believe this is part of a larger plan.”

Marcus reached in his pocket and pulled out the head of the spear. “I know this belongs to the bigger plan. We discovered it at Chartres Cathedral. It was hidden behind a marble statue, maybe the sculpture of Saint Longinus. Using the measurements of the sacred cubit, combined with the information I decoded from Newton and the Bible, ‘…for the shadow is to the seeker as the seeker is to the shadow…’ we found it.”

“Astounding…prophetic…may I see it?”

Marcus handed the spear to Jacob and said, “Someone knows we have that. And they want it enough to kill for it.”

“What do you mean?”

Marcus told him and added, “The real value in the spear isn’t the alleged power it has, but rather the direction it points.”

“What do you mean?”

“The future. It’s written on the other side of the blade.”

Jacob held the spear under his desk light. He turned the blade over, his eyes narrowing as he read. “It’s in Hebrew. ‘The city had no need of the sun, neither the moon to shine in it…for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light that will be there.’ Paul, what do you think it means?”

“It pointed us to passageways under the Old City, right after the quake. Look, Jacob, we found…the Ark of the Covenant.”

Jacob’s mouth parted. He set the spearhead on the desk and slowly sat down, knees weak, his eyes looking up to meet Marcus. “Hidden beneath Jerusalem?”

“Yes.”

“Words fail me.”

“We also found something else”

“What?”

“A vase, sealed. I opened it. Why? Because in spite of Nathan Levy’s deception, I believe that’s what I was drawn here to do. I think the words were from Daniel…or at least what God told Daniel and had him seal in a vase.”

“What did it read? What did the words say?”

Marcus took the flash drive from his pocket. He held it in his outstretched hand. “It’s on this. I snapped a picture of what we discovered and loaded to this drive. We’ve found words sealed from thousands of years ago that resonate today, right now. And they’ve pointed Alicia and me to a cancer that’s been festering since before Newton, now about to rise to the surface.”

“What is it, Paul?”

“A few weeks ago, I showed you how Newton used the Bible to predict the return of the Jews to a homeland, and Newton figured the date. What he didn’t know is that the Arab-Israeli War of ‘48 wasn’t as much motivated by the acquisition of land as it was the possession of oil. Business interests, many of the same that supported a war that created the holocaust, supported the stability of what would become the new Middle East. The seeds of OPEC were planted then. The governments of the U.S. and England became the underwriters of the region’s stability…and eventually the leading force in the oil industry. For some companies, those ostensibly with ties to the German oil and chemical giant, I.G. Farben, the goal was the solidarity of Arab states. Why? It would be more lucrative than the establishment of an Israeli state and the likely polarization of oil-rich Arab territories. A new oil cartel was rising from the Suez Canal to Iran. I believe those sitting on trial as Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, those former Farben executives, looked to their corporate partners in Britain and the U.S. to align the new Middle East to ensure all oil wells flowed to the West. Guys like David Marcus — tough, smart military men, could prolong the fighting against the Palestinians, and men like him were killed.”

Jacob’s eyes lowered. “Who was behind it?”

“A select few people whose families have a centuries old creed and business interests that they think gives them a license to cross international laws and borders to undermine humanitarian efforts that may interfere with them making money. These people will gut a nation if it can add to their coffers and power, usually by building infrastructures that often lead to wars and the funding of wars.”

Alicia added, “And they’ll do business in the charade of development and production to prevent wars, as oxymoronic as that might sound.”

“What do you mean?” Jacob asked.

Marcus said, “Specifically, the National Security Act that’s being proposed in the U.S. Congress, the same one that was discussed in the G8 Summit this summer. If the bill is passed, a firm called Integrated Security Corporation may do a lion’s share of the global satellite communications development.”

Alicia nodded. “It’s the fox watching the hen house scenario. That company is controlled by a man named Jonathon Carlson.”

“Who’s he?” asked Jacob.

“A multibillionaire who not only controls Integrated Security Corporation, but PetChem Consolidated Group that’s believed to have connections to the Russian oil conglomerate, Rosneft, the largest oil company in the world. Carlson may have engineered a deal to extract oil and gas from Syria under an exchange for arms agreement. Carlson didn’t just happen to become a savvy, cutthroat businessman. His dowry goes back a few centuries directly to Isaac Newton.”

Jacob’s eyebrows arched. “Newton…what do you mean?”

Marcus slid the flash drive back into his pocket. “Alicia is one of the best researchers in the world. What she found is a tie, a historical and biological link, to a man named William Chaloner, a brilliant criminal that Newton had to trap in order to prosecute for crimes against England. Jonathon Carlson is a direct descendent to William Chaloner. And to put it in closer viewpoint, Carlson is the grandson of Andrew Chaloner, the man whose firm, Chaloner Industries, backed and financed the companies that built the Third Reich in Germany.”

“Dear God,” whispered Jacob.

“Some of these executives at one company, Farben, were charged with crimes against humanity and tried in Nuremberg after the war. David Marcus helped prosecutors bring the charges against these men. I believe it was Andrew Chaloner who wanted this spear after General Patton was killed. And I think it’s his grandson who wants it today.” Marcus lifted the spearhead from the desk.

Jacob’s eyes opened wide behind his thick glasses. “From Newton’s time, three hundred years ago, to events of today…all related…and all foretold by prophets like Isaiah, following the word of God.”

“Alicia found information that reveals David Marcus and Yitzhak Rabin worked closely together during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. They’d negotiated a cease-fire. Marcus was killed the next day. Decades later, Rabin was assassinated. I think David Marcus may have been, too. And now Prime Minister Meltzer was assassinated. The new interim prime minister, Eilam Cohen, is a man who was educated in the U.S. at Yale, and was a classmate of Senator Wyatt Dirkson — the same man pushing the International Security Act. He’s also the same man who spent a luxury weekend at Jonathon Carlson’s Texas ranch. Dirkson is priming the pump for a run at the presidency. Most likely it’s Carlson and his political cronies who had something to do with the deadly final flight of John Kennedy Junior when his plane went down in the water near Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy, in his magazine George, published a story written by Guela Amir, the mother of the man found guilty of Rabin’s assassination. His name is Yigal Amir. His mother contended, at the time, that Amir was goaded into the killing by someone with the Shin Bet.”

Jacob shook his head slowly. “When I saw your name in the Newton papers, never would I have known all of this would unfold. It is God’s plan…and now as his messenger…” Jacob glanced at Alicia. “You both are his messengers, perhaps. What will you do? What can you do?”

Marcus looked at the spearhead in his hand. “Get rid of this…for good, literally, and deliver a memorandum. We have names and faces. Jacob, if there is a true axis of evil, I think we’ve been guided to uncover it. It could lead to all hell breaking out on earth to stop it. But this little blue-green planet is all we have. I believe it’s worth fighting for.”

Alicia looked at her mobile phone. “It’s a few minutes before three. Jacob, do you have a TV here?”

“Yes, why?”

“In a few minutes, the Iranians are supposed to free my niece, Brandi.”