The Six Messiahs

scenes, faces, people passing by.'

Two central images on the page: a large tree with drooping, denuded branches, holding ten round, white globes arrayed in a geometric pattern and connected by straight lines.

'That's the Tree of Life,' said Stern. 'An image I've seen in kabbalistic books. I'm afraid I couldn't begin to tell you the significance of it.'

The other image: a black castle, stark and forbidding, a single window illuminated in its highest tower. Sparks's eyes narrowed as he stared at it.

'Looks like something out of, what do you call it, you know,' said Innes, snapping his fingers. 'The dwarf and the pretty girl...'

'Rumpelstiltskin?' said Stern.

'Rapunzel let down your hair and all that,' said Innes.

Doyle didn't take his eyes off Sparks; something was rumbling up from deep inside the man.

'What does this mean?' said Sparks, pointing to a boldly sketched cuneiform figure on the page below the castle.

'Schischah,' said Stern. 'That's the Hebrew word for six.'

'The number six?' asked Sparks.

'Yes,' said Stern. 'It has other meanings, in the kabbalistic sense, but you'd need a scholar to—'

Sparks stood up abruptly and jumped back from the table; chair legs screeched against the floor. He stared over at the bed in the corner, a wild, uncontained look passing through his eyes, as if he'd seen a ghost.

'Jack? You all right?' asked Doyle.

Sparks didn't answer. Tension coming off him permeated the room. A water pipe dripping rhythmically somewhere sounded as loud as gunshots.

'Where is the Gerona Zohar?'' asked Sparks.

'The safe in my offices,' said Stern. 'A few blocks north of here.'

'I need to see it. Now.'

'I'll take you there.'

Sparks and Stern started for the door.

'Bring that pad of paper,' said Doyle quietly to Innes. He pried the pad out from under the books without knocking over the stack and they followed Jack out of the tenement.

Gaslight threw weak ripples of light into the damp air. Sparks led the way like a bloodhound straining at its leash; footsteps echoing, streets empty as midnight approached.

In the shadows across the way from Stern's building on St. Mark's Place loitered two young toughs, cigarettes hanging off their lips. As the party went inside, and lights flickered on in the fourth-floor window of the office, one of the toughs ran off down the street; the other stayed to watch.

Lionel Stern dialed the safe's combination, removed the wooden crate, set it down on his desk, and lifted the cover. The Gerona Zohar was large, nearly two feet square and three inches deep, bound in dark antiquated leather. Stern slipped on a pair of frayed white gloves and opened the cover; the binding creaked like an arthritic elbow.

'Backwards, isn't it?' asked Innes.

'Hebrew reads from right to left; this is the front of the book,' said Stern.

'I see,' said Innes, wishing he could swallow his fist.

Sparks stared at the parchment of the first page, yellow and crusted with age, densely covered with fading handwritten words.

'Let me see that pad,' said Sparks.

Innes handed it to him. Doyle watched Jack: What was he on to?

'Is this a drawing of the Zohar, here?' asked Sparks, pointing to a sketch on the pad's margin: an open, leather-bound book, strikingly similar to the one before them. Matching script scribbled inside its front page.

'Could be,' said Doyle.

Sparks took out a magnifying glass, leaned over and examined Stern's drawing then scrutinized the first page of the Gerona Zohar.

'Your father has never seen the Gerona Zohar?' asked Sparks.

'No.'

'Then how has he in this sketch exactly reproduced its first • page?'

Sparks handed the glass to Doyle: The minute writing in Rabbi Stern's sketch was identical to the book. Stern examined the two fragments as well.

'I can't account for it,' said Stern.

'What do you make of this?' asked Sparks, pointing to a dark shape on the pad drawn over the corner of the book.

'A shadow,' said Doyle, looking closer. 'A hand. Reaching for the book.'

'Did your father ever talk about his dreams?' asked Sparks.

'Dreams? No, not that I can recall.'

'What are you driving at, Jack?' asked Doyle.

Sparks looked at the pad and pointed to the drawing of the castle.

'I have seen this black tower before,' he said.

'Seen it? Where?'

Sparks looked up at Doyle, hesitant. 'In a dream.'

'This same tower?'

'I could have sketched this myself.'

'Sure it's not some place you saw once that's drifted up through your subconscious?' said Stern.

'Then how do we explain the drawing?' asked Doyle. 'You said your father never left New York City.'

'He came here from Russia as a young man,' said Stern. 'Perhaps something he saw there or along the way.'

'Perhaps a picture he came across in a book,' said Innes, taking the pad and the glass from Stern.

'What sort of dream, Jack?' asked Doyle, trying to keep him focused.

Sparks stared grimly at the drawing, then spoke softly, as if confessing something to Doyle. 'I had the dream first three months ago. Keeps coming back, with greater intensity, always the same. This black tower. A white desert. Something underground. A phrase repeating over and over again in my mind. We are Six.'

'Six? You mean—'

'Yes.'

'Like the number Stern drew on the pad...'

'Yes.'

'Who's Brachman?' asked Innes.

'Brachman? Where did you see that?' asked Stern.

'Written here, very small letters, on the edge of this drawing,' said Innes, pointing to the pad with the glass.

'Isaac Brachman is a colleague of my father's, a rabbi at a temple in Chicago____'

'And a scholar of the Zohar?'

'One of the most learned. I may have mentioned him to you on the ship, if not by name. We obtained the Tikkunei Zohar, the addendum to the Zohar, for him to study. Rabbi Brachman was a principal organizer of the Parliament of Religions last year at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.'

'Did your father attend that convention?' asked Doyle.

'He (id; every major religion in the world was represented.... '

'When was the last time you spoke to Rabbi Brachman?'

'I don't recall; weeks ago, certainly before I left for London.'

'You must wire him immediately,' said Doyle.

'Why?'

'Doyle is suggesting that your father's gone to Chicago to visit Rabbi Brachman,' said Sparks, coming out of his fog.