The Columbus Affair: A Novel

But six days of pounding caused no damage to the Temple Mount.

Its massive stones held.

Attempts to scale the great wall failed. Finally, the Romans set fire to the gates and burst through.

The Jews also set fires, hoping to check the Romans’ advance, but the flames spread too quickly and burned down barriers protecting the sanctuary. The defenders were but a handful fighting against far superior numbers. They met their death willingly, some throwing themselves on Roman swords, some slaying one another, others taking their own lives by leaping into the flames.

None regarded what was happening as a destruction.

Instead, they saw their own demise as a salvation, and felt happiness at perishing along with their Second Temple.

Through the pall of smoke centurions ran amok, looting and killing. Corpses were piled around the sacred altar. Blood poured down the sanctuary steps, bodies slithering down the risers atop red rivers. Eventually, no one could walk without touching death.

Titus and his entourage managed to gain entrance to the sanctuary before it was destroyed. They had heard of its magnificence, but to stand amid the opulence was another matter. The Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple, was overlaid with gold, its inner door crafted of Corinthian brass. Suspended above the twelve steps leading to the entrance was a spreading vine of gold, replete with clusters of grapes as tall as a man. A silver-and-gold crown—not the original, but a copy of the one worn by the high priest after the return from Babylonian exile—was prominently displayed.

Then there were the sacred objects.

A golden menorah. The divine table. Silver trumpets.

All had been commissioned by God, on Mount Sinai, for Moses to create. The Romans knew that, by destroying the Second Temple and removing these treasures, the essence of Judaism would also be symbolically extinguished.

Another exile would then occur.

Not physically, though many would die or be enslaved, but certainly spiritually.

There would be no Third Temple.

And for the past 1,940 years that had been the case, Alle thought, as she entered the only Viennese synagogue the Nazis had not destroyed.

The Stadttempel sat among a block of anonymous apartment buildings, hidden away, thanks to Emperor Joseph II who decreed that only Catholic churches could face public streets. Ironically, that insult was what saved the building, as it had proven impossible for the Germans to torch it without burning the whole block to the ground.

The 19th-century sanctuary was oval-shaped, its ceiling supported by gilded beams and a ring of twelve Ionic columns—symbolic, she knew, of Jacob’s twelve sons, the progenitors of the tribes of Israel. A star-speckled, sky- blue dome loomed overhead. She’d visited here many times over the past month, the building’s shape and elegance making her feel as if she were inside a jeweled egg.

What would it mean for the Jews to have their Third Temple in Jerusalem?

Everything.

And to complete that accomplishment her adopted faith would also require its sacred vessels.

Her gaze drifted around the dimly lit sanctuary and her eyes watered.

She could still feel hands groping her body. Never had anyone touched her like that before.

She started to cry.

What would her mother have thought? She’d been a good woman, who rarely spoke ill of her ex-husband, always encouraging her daughter to forgive him.

But she never could.

What she’d just done to her father should bother her, but thoughts of what lay ahead helped with her rationalizations.

She stemmed the tears and calmed herself.

The Ark of the Covenant would never be found. The Babylonians had seen to that. The golden menorah, the divine table, and the silver trumpets? They could still exist.

The Temple treasure.

Or what was left of it.

Gone for 1,940 years.

But, depending on her father, maybe not for much longer.

CHAPTER NINE

ZACHARIAH WAS PLEASED. THE VIDEO HAD PLAYED OUT PERFECTLY. Rocha made the point, albeit a bit more forcefully than they’d discussed.

Tom Sagan seemed to have grasped the message.

And this man was even more vulnerable than his daughter had described.

Never had there been any mention of suicide. Alle had simply told him that her father lived a solitary life in a