Leo and John sat happily munching away by the pool while Lev and the three fit-looking men approached them. Two of the men appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties, while the third appeared to be at least in his fifties. Setting their plates aside, Leo and John stood to meet the group.
“Are you feeling rested, my friends?” Lev asked. “Is the food to your liking?”
“The food is excellent, Lev. I’ve never seen such a spectacular feast put together in a private home. I feel like a guest at an exclusive resort. We can’t thank you enough for your generous hospitality.”
“How about you, John? Did you get enough to eat?”
Red as a lobster from too much sun, John stood next to Leo holding a skewer of meat in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. “This is probably one of the best meals I’ve ever had. My folks back on our ranch in New Mexico used to put on some real parties with lots of Mexican food and barbecue, but nothing like this.”
“Well, this is a special occasion,” Lev said, winking at the men around him. Let’s go inside, and I’ll start the introductions.” Lev studied John’s deepening red color. “You two need to get out of the sun.”
The group filed into the villa and entered a cavernous room with a red-tiled floor and a man-sized iron chandelier hanging from the center of a thirty-foot high ceiling. The walls were painted the color of desert sand and lined with artwork, while Persian carpets and white fabric sofas took up the center of the room, giving the space a modern Mid-Eastern flavor. Floor-to-ceiling windows at one end opened up the space to a panoramic view of the sea, while on opposite sides of the room, two wide hallways led away from the great room into separate parts of the villa.
As the men gathered around on sofas, the holiday mood took on a distinctly more business-like tone when Lev stood and faced Leo and John for a moment before speaking. “I want to start off by saying that everyone here is very grateful that you two made it to Israel safely. Those of us involved with the Bible code have been extremely impressed with both of you, especially your involvement in the discovery of the ancient chapel and your ability to shake off your pursuers and make it to Israel without being stopped. I’m sure we’ll all get to know one another much better in the days ahead, but before we get to the matter of why we’ve all been called together at this exact time and place, I want to introduce you to the team Father Morelli was working with for the past year.”
The stoic-looking men sitting across from Leo and John smiled in their direction. “Shalom,” they all said in unison.
“Don’t let their casual looks give you a false impression,” Lev said. “Most are experts in their chosen fields, and all of them have devoted the past year of their lives to the study of the code in the Bible.”
The man seated next to Lev stood and seized Leo’s hand in a vice-like grip. Leo returned the squeeze, causing the man to smile. “I heard you were once a boxer, Father. You still have a good grip.”
“This is Moshe Ze?ev,” Lev said. “Our chief of security.”
“Pleased to meet you, Moshe.” Leo watched as John winced in the clutches of the man’s iron handshake. At fifty-five years of age, Moshe was the oldest and most colorful member of the three. He was wearing a bright blue fly-fishing shirt, lime-green shorts, and flip-flops. The long, thin muscles of a runner made it obvious that he still kept himself in shape, and his tanned head was completely shaved. His only facial hair was a thick handlebar moustache that he twirled at the ends. Leo knew Moshe’s name was, of course, synonymous with the man who delivered the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt-Moses.
“Moshe was a general in the Israeli Defense Force before joining the Mosad, our version of the CIA,” Lev continued. “Let’s just say he knows more than your average citizen about what goes on in this country and other parts of the world.”
A large man dressed in khaki pants with a tight-fitting brown T-shirt stood up. He was six feet five inches tall and looked like a linebacker in the NFL. At the age of thirty-five, he had black hair worn short on top and shaved on the sides and was the only one of the group who did not have any facial hair.
“This is Alon Lavi,” Lev said. “Alon was a captain in the Israeli Special Forces and is Moshe’s second in command here at the villa.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Father. And you too, John.”
Leo reached out to shake his hand. “Alon is a Hebrew name, isn’t it?”
“It means oak tree,” Lev said, cutting in. “Very fitting, don’t you think?”
Alon blushed slightly as the Israeli men began to laugh. John stood to shake hands with the big man while making a mental note to be standing close to this guy if a fight ever broke out.
The third man extended his hand toward Leo and John. In his late twenties, with short, dark hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a beard, he had a decidedly more intellectual look about him than the others. He was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt that was one size too large and wearing the ever-present khaki shorts that seemed so popular among the staff at the villa.
“Hi. I’m Daniel … Daniel Meir.”
“The Book of Daniel calls you the interpreter of dreams,” Leo said,
Lev seemed impressed. “Very good, Father.” The Israeli men nodded their approval and obvious respect for Leo.
“It also means one who is pious and wise in the Book of Ezekiel,” John added, also earning a few nods of respect from the others.
Quiet by nature, Daniel was embarrassed by the attention. “Well, since you’ve given me the challenge of having to live up to my name, I hope I don’t disappoint you. Of course, one can’t help but remember that Daniel was also thrown into the lion’s den. I have a feeling history is repeating itself.” The room erupted in laughter at the obvious reference to all those present whose names meant lion.
Lev put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and smiled. “Daniel was a cryptographer or ‘code breaker’ in the ministry of defense and, like me, has a PhD in mathematics.”
John was just sitting back down when he noticed the girl he had seen earlier on the beach enter the room from one of the side hallways. She walked right up to Lev and kissed him lightly on the cheek. John suddenly felt self-conscious and began brushing his hair back from his forehead with his fingers.
“Let me introduce you to the final member of the team, running late as usual,” Lev said, smiling at the girl. “This is my daughter, Ariella.”
Leo took her small but strong hand in his. “It seems we have yet another lion. Ariella is Hebrew for lioness of God. Daniel truly is in the lion’s den.”
Ariella laughed and swept a strand of long brown hair back over her shoulder. “It’s an honor to meet you, Father Leo.”
John wiped his hands on his shorts and reached out to shake her hand while uttering a squeaky hello. Ariella smiled sweetly at him before she lowered her enormous brown eyes and turned shyly back toward her father. She was the same height as John, and he couldn’t help but notice that her lean tan legs gave her the look of an Olympic swimmer. John thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever met.
“My daughter has honored me by following in the footsteps of my second career,” Lev said. “She just received her degree in archaeology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem.”
Leo and John had a newfound appreciation for the individual talents and abilities of this special group of people, a group that had obviously been assembled with a definite mission in mind.
One of Leo’s favorite pastimes was looking up the meanings and origins of names that were new to him. Aside from those he had recently met who were named after lions, he was struck by the way all of the Israelis seemed to have names that fit their roles in life. For instance, Alon’s last name was Lavi, obviously another lion, and Moshe’s surname, Ze?ev, meant literally “son of wolf”. It appeared that Lev had chosen both a lion and a wolf to be in charge of protecting those he loved.
Then there was Daniel’s name-the strangest coincidence of all. As Leo had mentioned earlier, Daniel was called the interpreter of dreams in the Bible, but his last name, Meir, meant brilliant. Putting the two together, Leo saw that the name of the team’s chief cryptographer meant brilliant interpreter. It was a very appropriate name for a code breaker, and a strange coincidence indeed.
Lev grew serious as he gazed at Leo and John across an immense coffee table hewn from the single trunk of an olive tree. “We would like to extend an invitation. Before I picked you two up at the airport this morning, we all took a little vote. The result was unanimous, and we’ve all agreed that we would like both of you to join our team here in Israel.”
The others nodded silently in agreement.
Leo and John looked around the room and studied the faces staring back at them. Wasn’t this why they had come to Israel in the first place? Not only had they developed a keen interest in the code, but they were now becoming totally entranced with their new friends in this exotic setting. The Israelis waited for their answer.
“It looks like I’ll have to request a leave of absence from my teaching position,” Leo said. “It would be an honor, Lev.”
Lev fixed his eyes on John. “What about you, John?”
“I believe joining your team is the reason we’ve come here, Professor. Father Morelli sent us to the Holy Land with a definite purpose in mind, and even if we’re not sure what that is right now, I know he wanted us all to be together.”
“Good. It’s final then. Baruch haba!” Lev used the Hebrew phrase for welcome.
Moshe stood from his place on the couch and gave Lev a sly wink. “Why don’t we take them downstairs and show them around our little playground?”
Lev smiled when he saw the puzzled looks on Leo and John’s faces. “Follow me. I think this is something you will both find interesting.” John and Leo traded looks before following Lev and his team down one of the side hallways to an alcove with a staircase descending below ground level. Following a short hallway at the bottom of the stairs, they passed through a double-wide doorway and entered a dimly lit room painted dark gray.
There were two rows of glass-topped tables holding several computer screens and keyboards. Five enormous flat-panel screens lined one wall, and another side of the room had a thick, vault-like steel door in the center. The opposite wall was taken up with an enormous map of Israel and a large erasable board covered in Hebrew writing.
The back of the room held a communications center and was separated from the rest of the space by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. This area looked like something one would see in a command bunker at NASA and created a futuristic-looking backdrop to the scene. The light from the large screens on the wall infused the area with a bluish hue, while small spotlights scattered in the ceiling created pools of white light around the room.
“I’m not a military man,” Leo said, “but this looks to me like some kind of command center.”
“You’re right,” Moshe said. “That’s exactly what it is. You’re standing in the command center for the Bible Code Team. I copied it from the one I had in the army.”
John was amazed. “It looks like you’re still in command of an army. This place is really something.”
“These are our computer stations, which are connected to a larger mainframe,” Ariella explained. “The main computer is programmed with a powerful Bible code search engine. Just enter any word or phrase, and the computer will begin searching in an effort to pinpoint its encoded location in the Bible. Our portable laptops have similar software for field use.”
John and Leo walked around the room with Lev, taking in the layout and looking at all of the equipment, while the Israelis continued to study the two new members of their team.
From one of the tables, Alon grabbed a small radio and clipped it to his belt before plugging in the tiny earpiece and boom microphone. He then walked over to the locked vault door and entered a code into a keypad on the wall. The thick steel door opened slowly, allowing Alon to enter the vault and return with a backpack and a large pistol in a shoulder holster. He motioned to John. “Come with me.”
John cast a “who, me?” look at Alon. “Where are we going?”
“Outside for a quick patrol of the perimeter.”
Sizing up Alon, who truly did seem as solid as an oak tree, John knew it was pointless asking any more questions. Looking back over his shoulder at Leo, he timidly followed Alon up the stairs, looking like a teenager who had just stepped off the bus to boot camp trailing behind his new drill instructor.
Once outside in the bright sunshine, Alon explained to John that the property was surrounded by individual rings of security. Walking past a young man armed with an assault rifle, the two continued along the sand dunes for a quarter of a mile until Alon came to a stop at the perimeter of the property.
“What do you see?” Alon asked.
Looking down the line of shifting sand dunes toward the villa in the distance, John was puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure what you’re asking, Alon. I see the ocean, fields of crops, some houses, and the villa over there. Other than that, I just see sand dunes and some palm trees.”
“That’s all we want people to see.”
Opening his olive-colored backpack, Alon pulled out a small shovel and a device that resembled a mini metal detector. Pointing the device at the ground, he began scanning the sandy soil around them. After receiving a strong, audible signal, he began to dig. Barely three shovelfuls of sand later, he exposed the tip of a wire connected to a black plastic box.
“There. That’s a motion detector,” Alon said. “They’re all around the perimeter. When anything crosses this area, an alarm goes off and the exact location of an intruder flashes on a computer screen in the command post by the front gate.”
“Pretty impressive, but why are you showing me this? I’m not a security person or a soldier. Do you want me to help you patrol around the villa for terrorists or something?”
“No, I’m sorry, of course not, John. We have our own trained people for that, although in this country, we’re all soldiers until a certain age. Something happened a few hours ago that you need to know about.”
Alon scooped sand back over the motion detector, and the two began heading back down the line of dunes. They were almost to the villa when John noticed the blue flashing lights of an Israeli police vehicle as it raced through the front gate, followed by two dark-brown military Humvees. Holding his hand to his earpiece, Alon said something in Hebrew into the microphone and began running toward the villa while signaling for John to follow.
The vehicles skidded to a halt on the circular gravel driveway in front of the house and several uniformed police officers piled out, dragging two handcuffed men dressed in suits with them. A senior officer approached Alon, and after a brief exchange, everyone headed inside.
“What’s going on?” John asked. “What are all these police doing here?”
“I believe this has something to do with what I was getting ready to tell you about. Come on. Let’s go inside.”
The police led the men through the doors of the main entrance, where they came face-to-face with Lev and the rest of his team standing at the bottom of a winding staircase.
“Are these the two men we called you about, Commander?” Lev asked.
“Yes, sir. The license plate on their car matches the number you gave us and they have pictures of the villa on their digital cameras. We stopped them about twenty miles south of here outside of Tel Aviv.”
Lev patted the police commander on the shoulder. “Nice work, David. Thanks for helping us out.” Lev had known this policeman since he was just a boy, the son of a close friend. “Have they said anything to you?”
“Not a word. Here are their IDs and passports.”
“They’re not Israeli?”
“Look for yourself, Professor. These guys are Swiss Guards from the Vatican.”
The two men in handcuffs shot glances at Leo and John, followed by a quick look back in the direction of the police commander.
“Well, it looks like some of your friends from Rome followed you two here,” Lev said. “Undoubtedly, whomever these men take their orders from knows exactly where you two are.”
John and Leo were speechless. They believed they were free from the intrigue and dangers they had faced in Rome. Now, in the foyer of Lev’s villa in Israel, they had two Vatican security men standing right in front of them.
“What are they going to do with them, Lev?” Leo asked. “Can we speak to them?”
The police commander faced Leo. “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re in our custody now. We can’t allow you to talk to them, but I assure you, we will find out what they are doing in our country. For now, they will be charged with trespassing. After we find out why they were taking pictures of the villa, they may have additional charges added on.”
“Do you know when they arrived from Rome?” Moshe asked.
“According to customs, they checked into the airport three days ago.”
“That’s before we arrived,” John said.
Alon looked at John. “It’s also before we knew you were coming.”
Lev handed the passports back to David. “There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we need to let you do your job and see where that leads us. Thank you for bringing them by, David.”
Ariella stepped forward and gave the police officer some photos the security force at the villa had taken of the men from a hidden rooftop camera. These included pictures of the vehicle’s license plate and one of the men talking on a cell phone.
“One picture is worth a thousand words,” Lev said, looking at the photos in the police commander’s hands. “I sure would like to know who he was talking to.”
The police commander nodded his head. “So would we …we’re working on that. I’ll give you a call, Professor, if we learn anything else that might be of value to you. Shalom.”
“Shalom,” the group responded as the police led the two men away.
“That was amazing,” John said. “If you don’t mind, Alon, I’d like to spend some time learning all I can about the security precautions you guys use.”
The Israelis smiled as Alon slapped John on the back. “Then tomorrow we start with target practice. You’ll be like a soldier when I get through with you. An Israeli-trained soldier.”
“I can’t figure out how they knew we would be here,” Leo said. “These people are really spooky. Father Morelli said our lives would be in danger-that there are dark forces aligned against us. I only hope those forces don’t already have the upper hand.”
“At least we had the upper hand today, Father,” Lev said.
“True, but those men were human. All the motion detectors and weapons in the world are useless if we come up against a supernatural force.”
The others sobered noticeably when Leo mentioned the word supernatural.
Leo looked across the foyer and noticed Daniel walking from the hallway with a sheaf of papers in his hands.
“Professor Wasserman, I think you need to see something.”
“What have you got there, Daniel?”
“It’s a printout of something I just found in that section of the Bible we’ve been trying to decipher for the past two months.”
Lev slipped on his glasses and took the printout from Daniel.
“When were you able to reveal this part of the code?”
“About half an hour ago. I looked around to tell you, but everyone had left.”
As one of the world’s premier code breakers, Daniel was the typical scholar who tended to get so focused on his work that he was oblivious to all outside distractions.
Lev raised the glasses up on top of his head after reading the first page of the printout. “I think we all need to go back downstairs to the command center and have a little meeting.”
Everyone crowded down the narrow stairway into the command center and watched as Lev scrolled through several encoded pages of the Bible at his computer station. He paused to read before looking up at the large screen in the front of the room. “Daniel, can you bring up a map of the area around the Dead Sea on that screen?”
“Sure, Professor.” Daniel punched in coordinates on the keyboard, and the large center screen lit up with a multicolored interactive map of the area.
“Zero in south of the Dead Sea. I want to enlarge that area of the desert.”
Daniel continued to type, causing the display to zoom in on a sun-baked wilderness known as the Negev Desert.
“There,” Lev said, “that’s the area Daniel just pinpointed using the code in the Bible.”
Leo stared at the screen. “What are we looking at, Lev?”
“Since last summer, we’ve been trying to pinpoint the location of something we discovered in the code-a physical place that harbors an evolving disturbance in relation to the balance between good and evil in the world. We also found an encoded reference to an object connected to this disturbance. There’s something out there. It’s probably been there for thousands of years, and we believe it’s very important to none other than Satan himself.”
“Did I hear you correctly, Professor?” John asked. “Did you say something important to Satan?”
“Yes, very important. Daniel just found the exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of this area, along with several combinations of words spelled out in close proximity to each other embedded in the Bible. According to the code, these coordinates point directly to an area here on earth reserved for Satan. It also states that this area is ferociously guarded by him. There is something of great value to Satan at that location, and that is where we must go.”
The rest of the team stood in stunned silence. They knew the Bible code was leading them somewhere, but they had not prepared themselves for anything like this. They were being led into the heart of the barren Negev Desert, to a place spelled out as Satan’s domain here on earth.
Father Leo took a few steps toward the screen. “Father Morelli indicated to me in a letter that what we are looking for is very old, dating to the time when Lucifer was cast from heaven by God. That much we know. What we don’t know is what ‘it’ is. Morelli also warned that this may have some connection with the end of days for humanity. As you might guess, this undertaking could be extremely dangerous, both physically and spiritually. The fact that we must travel to an area said to be reserved for Satan here on earth is especially disturbing to me. I’ve never read anything in biblical literature that mentions anything about a specific place on earth set aside for Satan.”
“How can a place here on earth be held in reserve for Satan?” John asked, incredulous at the thought. “I mean, really, was that an allegorical reference, or do you seriously believe that we’ll be entering Satan’s actual domain?”
“Let me answer that question,” Daniel said. He entered some commands on the keyboard, and a page from the Bible written in Hebrew appeared. Circled in red were the translated words Negev Desert crossed by the words Satan’s domain. Next to these words was the phrase, the five chosen must enter.
Daniel looked up from his computer. “As you can see for yourself, this phrase appears to mean a physical spot here on earth. It also gives the exact number of those who will enter this area. The code is usually pretty specific in its wording.”
Those who were seeing this for the first time found themselves staring slack-jawed at the screen. But there was more to come.
“Daniel, bring up the next page,” Lev said.
Another page of the Torah appeared on the screen. The phrase that which belongs to Satan, was spelled out vertically. On top of that, they saw the words they will give it to God displayed across the top of the page. To the right was the name Leo. To the left of Leo’s name were the names John, Alon, Ariella, and Lev. Crossing both Leo’s and Lev’s names horizontally was the word leaders. Crossing the other names was one word: chosen.
Leo had to physically steady himself. Morelli had specifically told Leo that he had been named in the Bible code as a leader, but here for the first time, he saw his name actually encoded in God’s book. Lev turned to him and clasped the priest on the shoulder.
“You can’t get much more specific than that, Father.”
“What does the phrase ‘they will give it to God’ mean?” Ariella asked.
“I believe it means that five who will enter Satan’s domain will be tasked by God to actually take something that belongs to the Devil and give it to God,” Lev said.
“How do you go about giving something to God?” Moshe asked. The others nodded in his direction, everyone thinking the same thing.
John felt a chill run up his spine. “And how do you take something from Satan? It seems like every time we find an answer, another question pops up.”
Like the humidity from the sea air that flowed through the windows upstairs and crept down the stairway to mix with the cool, air-conditioned environment of the command center, an uneasy silence descended on the group.
Lev put his hand on John’s shoulder. “We still have a lot of sorting out to do. I think this would be a good time to settle down and try to find some more answers. One thing I know for sure; soon we will be heading out into the wilderness of the Negev Desert.”