The Temple Mount Code

36

When the charming young hostess guided them to their table, Lourds pulled out Miriam Abata’s chair. The young graduate student looked at him for a moment, obviously making her mind up about something, then sat.

‘Thank you.’

‘Sorry if I offended.’ Lourds put his backpack on one of the other chairs at the small table in the open-air section of the restaurant. He sat across from Miriam and placed his hat on the back of the chair with his backpack.

‘You didn’t offend.’

‘I pulled your chair out. You hesitated. Obviously, that didn’t suit you.’

‘I’m suspicious of men who pull my chair out. Generally they have an agenda.’

Gazing at the young woman, taking in her café au lait complexion, striking hazel-green eyes, and smooth jawline, Lourds felt certain a lot of young men had known her and ended up with ‘agendas.’ The blue-and-white stripe in her black hair really set off her look, and the jeans and blouse revealed that she was athletic. She looked familiar, but he was certain he’d never met her before.

‘No agenda. I was merely being polite.’

Miriam took one of the breadsticks from the basket on the table and deliberately snapped it in half before taking a bite. ‘That’s good.’

‘We’re just going to have a meal.’ Lourds took the thick book from his backpack. ‘I’m going to look over this book and Lev’s notes.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Keep an eye out for me.’

She frowned. ‘What?’

‘I tend to get involved in my reading. I need you to make sure I’m safe. That we’re safe.’ Lourds paused and pumped up the gravitas in his voice. ‘Whatever this book contains, I believe it’s part of the reason Lev was killed. According to the message he sent me, he couldn’t read it.’

‘Can you?’

‘Not yet. But I will.’ Lourds wondered why she didn’t ask about the potential for danger. That was the part he thought would scare her off.

‘You think you’re in danger?’

‘I think that possibly anyone connected with this book is in danger.’

Miriam took another small bite of her breadstick. ‘So who should I look for?’

‘Men with rocket launchers. Assault rifles. Grenades. Guns. Knives. Work your way back from that. Anyone who shows undue interest in us.’

She grinned at him, seemingly delighted in spite of herself. ‘You’re deliberately being provocative.’

Lourds gave her his full attention. ‘Miriam, please believe me: provocative or not, I’m telling you the truth. Do you know what happened to Lev?’

‘He was killed by terrorists.’

‘Do you believe that story?’

‘Why not?’

‘Did you know Lev?’

‘No.’

Lourds took a deep breath. Talking about Lev hurt. ‘For a “terrorist” attack, there was surprisingly little collateral damage. Besides Lev, the only people that apparently got killed were the terrorists themselves. Germans or Europeans, from the pictures I saw and from the media reports. Not Middle Easterners, as you might expect here in Jerusalem.’

Intrigued, Miriam lowered her voice and leaned closer. ‘You might try using your inside voice.’

Self-consciously, Lourds glanced around. Little Jerusalem Restaurant had inside seating and outside, where they were. The tables sat on flagstones and buffet tables ringed the dining area. A small stage area where live bands performed later in the evening was just outside the main building. Below that, a ridge of flowers — mums, daisies, and others Lourds couldn’t identify — showed spectacularly in a long rectangular section.

‘I wasn’t talking that loud.’

‘Your voice carries.’

‘Oh.’ Lourds shrugged. ‘One of the downsides of being a frequent lecturer. As I was saying, Lev’s death by terrorist is suspicious. At least to me. In his life, there wasn’t much he came in contact with that would have led to him being targeted by someone. He had to have found something of value. For the moment, all I know for sure is that he had this book. He left me messages, one in Jerusalem and the other in Vienna — though he didn’t suspect it would be there — that led me to this book.’

Her gaze dropped to the leather-bound volume.

‘If this is what people are willing to kill for, and we have it, we’re in danger. Do you understand?’

Miriam nodded. ‘Why haven’t you gone to the police with this?’

Lourds sighed. ‘Because the police have rules. They’re as bad as college administrations and other forms of bureaucracy. If I tell them what we’ve got, they’re going to want to step in and manage it. The first thing they’ll do is take away the book and send it to other specialists who know languages.’

‘If the book is that important, maybe that’s what should happen.’

Lourds scowled at her. ‘If Lev couldn’t figure out this book, there are precious few other people in the world who could. If he thought I was the only one capable of it, who am I to disagree with his reasoning?’

‘I guess there’s no ego in that assumption, is there?’

‘Of course there is. If I wasn’t egotistical to some degree, I wouldn’t even try to work with this in the first place.’

Miriam held her hands up in surrender. ‘All right. You’re the guy who just found a lost temple in the Himalayas. Let’s go with the possibility that you’re the person for this job.’

‘I am.’

‘Then why me?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Why ask me to help you?’

‘I thought I just explained that.’

‘No. You didn’t.’

Lourds held up a finger. ‘One, you’re not part of the University of Jerusalem hierarchy.’ He added another finger. ‘Two, you’re not a police officer.’ And he added another finger. ‘Three, you have some experience with Arabic languages, which — if I’m correct about the origins of this book — will come in handy. I don’t have that many friends who can do what I’m asking you to do.’

‘You don’t even know if you can trust me.’

Lourds smiled. ‘Dear girl, I don’t trust anyone, but I have to trust someone.’

‘I’d think you’d have a friend to call on.’

‘I have called on a friend. She’s working on a different angle at the moment.’

‘I meant that you could call someone to watch over you.’

‘If I did that, the police officers who are already watching me would have even more reason to keep tabs on my actions. I can’t have that.’

‘How much trouble can you be in?’

‘From whom? The university? They can’t touch me because they can’t prove this book was theirs. The police? They’re looking for a killer. I was in the Himalayas when Lev was murdered.’ The word murder fit much better to describe what had happened to Lev. ‘The only people I have to worry about right now are the ones looking for this book.’

‘Maybe they gave up after your friend was killed.’

‘No.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because a Viennese Austrian People’s Party member named Klaus Von Volker had men kidnap me in Vienna. They were going to kill me. I escaped and came here.’

Miriam just stared at him.

‘Look.’ Lourds felt guilty. ‘I need someone to act as an extra set of eyes and ears right now. But if you feel this is too dangerous, I’ll totally understand.’

She still didn’t speak.

For a moment, Lourds thought she might get up and walk out on him. But he’d been telling her the truth about needing someone, and his reasons for not calling in someone else. He didn’t know anyone trained well enough to act as a bodyguard in the places he was certain he would have to go.

‘Miriam, I know this is a lot to take in, but I’m going to offer you something that could be valuable. I don’t know where your dreams lie with regards to your education and career, but if you work with me, nothing dangerous, just act as a lookout, I’ll give you partial credit for whatever we discover. I promise, if this turns out as big as Lev thought it was, it’s something that could make your career.’

She blinked at him.

‘So?’ Lourds took a deep breath. ‘What do you say?’

For the next three hours, Miriam watched Lourds struggle with the mysterious book she’d helped him get from the university. Thankfully, he’d had a couple of paperbacks in his backpack that she could read while she performed lookout duty. Both of the books turned out to be spy novels, though, about big, violent men who killed indiscriminately. That wasn’t how spies killed. At least, it wasn’t how she killed.

Part of her still resented Lourds for his part in the shootings. Then she relented a little when she realized he’d gotten caught up in the scramble for whatever it was they were looking for just as much as she had. Lourds hadn’t asked his friend to call him up and drop him into the middle of this.

And God knew Lev Strauss hadn’t intentionally gotten himself killed either.

Working through that actually seemed to help her with her own guilt regarding the two dead men. She had gotten caught up in the web of lies and deceit while trying to help Lourds, just as he had gotten caught up. Instead of running away or dumping the problem in someone else’s lap, he’d stuck with it.

Of course, part of that reason was that incredible ego of his. No one else, in his mind, could do quite the job he could of sorting things out.

In the end, in spite of the ego, Miriam found herself liking and respecting Lourds more than she’d thought she would when Katsas Shavit had asked her to take the assignment. It was, to say the least, startling and mystifying. Instead of remembering how Lourds had gotten knocked out with one punch, she seemed focused on the fact that he’d gotten up in the first place — knowing that he wasn’t at his best and probably would have been outmatched even if he were — and tried to help her.

That was both innocent and foolish.

She suddenly realized Lourds was looking at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘I said, is that book not holding your interest?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘You haven’t turned a page in twenty minutes that I know of.’

‘I was watching for men with rocket launchers.’

Lourds grinned, and the genuine humor was infectious. The overall effect was blunted by the fact that it was true. Miriam had been watching for suspicious people.

‘I was also thinking that maybe we are sitting in the open, making it too easy to be attacked. If it should come to that.’

‘I like to think of it as hiding in plain sight.’ Lourds shrugged and took another bite of the sweet cheese blintz he’d ordered for dessert.

As she’d watched him eat, Miriam hadn’t been able to understand how he could put away as much food as he did and be as trim as he was.

‘People are killed in plain sight, too.’

‘We’re still alive.’

‘I’m beginning to think the waitress wishes we were dead.’ Miriam took another sip of her Turkish coffee. Lourds had stuck with muscat dessert wine, but he drank it slowly.

‘I tip big.’

‘How are you coming with the book?’

‘I don’t think the language is natural.’

‘What do you mean?’

Lourds put the book in his backpack, stretched, and yawned. ‘Pardon me. The last few days — weeks, actually — have been filled to the brim.’ He assembled his thoughts. ‘I can translate bits and pieces of the narrative here and there, just enough to give me a glimpse of what’s actually being written about, but I think there’s a subtext as well.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The book contains a narrative by a man who claims to have known Mohammad ibn Abdullah.’

‘The Prophet.’ That surprised Miriam. Katsas Shavit had told her that the Iranians might be involved in the mission, but she hadn’t expected this.

‘Yes.’ Lourds picked up his journal. It was covered with Post-its he’d removed from the book. ‘According to Lev’s notes, he’d had the book carbon-dated. It’s fourteen hundred years old.’

Miriam looked at the backpack. ‘How much is it worth?’

‘It’s not a scientific study by any recognized scholar, doesn’t cover anything concrete about scientific thinking or verifiable history, and focuses on a tale that can’t be verified.’ Lourds stopped himself. ‘At least, the story can’t be verified at this moment. I suspect some of it will become quite real.’ He frowned. ‘And that might be unfortunate for many of us.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Instead of answering, Lourds looked back over the notes stuck to his journal. He tapped one of them. ‘Lev was talking to an Iranian professor named Hashem Nabi Namati. He’s a professor at the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi. Are you familiar with it?’

Miriam thought for a moment, then placed the university. ‘They handle old and rare manuscripts.’

‘Exactly. The university was first established prior to 1457 and holds over a million books focusing on Islamic research. They’ve got over seventy thousand documents in the antiquities section, nearly twenty thousand of those handwritten documents. Much of the collection is over a thousand years old.’

‘What does that have to do with the book Professor Strauss had?’

‘Before his death, Lev was doing a lot of communication with Professor Namati. Letters, e-mail. I saw the name several times on documents at Lev’s office and on his computer.’

‘Maybe they’re just friends.’

‘Possibly. Except for this.’ Lourds pulled out a Post-it and passed it over to Miriam.

Miriam pushed the piece of paper back across the table. ‘What does that mean?’

‘You know what a code cipher is, don’t you?’

‘It’s a master key to a code.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Lourds grinned. ‘If I’m right, and I think that I am, that book Lev was working so hard to translate is written in code as well. Merely cracking the language to provide a translation isn’t going to be enough to solve all the mysteries associated with the book. Something else is hidden in its pages, and I’m sure Lev suspected that.’

‘Does Professor Namati know he has the code cipher?’

‘I doubt it. But in order to ascertain that, we’ll have to talk to him.’

‘“We”?’

Lourds nodded. ‘If you’re up to it.’

‘We’re going to Iran?’ The thought made Miriam’s guts churn. Her father had escaped that country once, then died there trying to close a case for the Mossad.

‘Yes.’

‘Just like that?’ Miriam didn’t have to fake incredulity. She was feeling it.

‘Well, I’ll have to talk to the US State Department first, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I can trade on the fact that I’m a scholar. I’ve spoken in Iran before, though it’s certainly been a while. But it shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re up to a little adventure, I think I can fold you under the umbrella as my graduate assistant. I’ll pay your expenses and will add a stipend at the end of this.’

Miriam thought about that, and her throat turned dry. With Iran in its current situation under the Ayatollah, with a populace striking back to get their voices heard in elections, she felt like she’d be surrounded by enemies. She swallowed hard. ‘Okay.’

She could only imagine what Katsas Shavit would say when she learned of the plan.