“Not sure,” Amit said, eyeing his friend curiously. Enoch was barefoot and soaked to the bone. His pale face, tinted blue, had him looking like the walking dead. Under his right arm were three Galils. “What in God’s name happened to you?”
“Long story,” he glibly replied, preoccupied with that fact that Amit had actually considered taking on the enemy with his puny handgun. “Get rid of that peashooter and take one of these.” He tossed a Galil to Amit.
“Much appreciated,” he said, catching it smoothly with his left hand.
“They’re in the shrine, aren’t they?” Enoch ejected the magazine from the third Galil before abandoning it in the flower garden.
“Afraid so,” Amit gloomily replied.
“The rabbi and how many others?” he asked, pocketing the magazine.
“Nine left. I think only two or three with weapons.”
“Better odds than Gaza.”
“Much better.”
“And the woman?”
“Still alive.”
“Right.” He took a deep breath. The icicles in his lungs were starting to thaw. “You have your mobile with you?” Thanks to the cistern, Enoch’s own phone had fizzled out the moment he tried to power it on.
“Yeah,” Amit said, pulling it out of his pocket.
Enoch put a call in to Mossad headquarters, and after providing his agent ID number, he informed the desk that Cohen and his crew had already made it inside the Dome of the Rock with an unidentified procurement and a hostage. He didn’t need to insist on backup or provide instruction. Necessary protocols had already begun.
“We can’t wait for backup,” Amit said. “If Cohen hears them coming—”
“I know,” Enoch replied. He handed the phone back. “I have no intention of dying in there. So let’s make it count. Shall we?”
“We shall,” Amit proudly replied. How the kid had grown. Not exactly like old times.
The two raced up the steps and across the platform. There was a double door centered on the lower marble-clad tier of the shrine’s wall. As in the other seven walls, there were seven stained-glass windows positioned in line above the doors, where the wall’s marble cladding gave way to magnificent Arabian tiles. So there wasn’t much concern about anyone on the inside seeing them coming.
Once they reached the wall, Enoch immediately raised his machine gun to blow out the doors’ center lock. But Amit quickly waved it away and dug into his pocket for his trusty lock-picking set.
85
******
Standing over the Ark, Charlotte was surprised by its robust dimensions. She could easily curl up inside it. Dominating the front of the box was a cartouche set above a large engraved disk with lines radiating down, each connecting to an ankh—no doubt a depiction of the sun. Small ideograms in neat columns covered the remainder of the front side, as well as the Ark’s side panels. She guessed the rear panel was similarly engraved. The designs could have come from only one place. “These Egyptian symbols and hieroglyphs,” she said. “Why are they . . .” Her voice trailed off.
The rabbi smiled knowingly. “Long ago, Egypt had been the dwelling place of the inexplicable life force the Egyptians called
Cohen went on to explain that around 1350 b.c.e.,Egypt’s first and only monotheistic ruler, Akhenaton, came to power and commanded that a new capital be constructed on the Nile’s east bank, set between the power centers of Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south—a city entirely dedicated to a single supreme god and creator. In the process, the pharaoh had completely abandoned the traditional polytheistic temple system, which had brought tremendous wealth and power to the centuries-old Egyptian priesthood, the priests of Amen.
“Akhenaton made many enemies,” Cohen continued. “So when terrible plagues befell Egypt during his reign, the priests of Amen expeditiously blamed the misfortune on Akhenaton’s religious digressions. They claimed that the pharaoh had tampered with
“
“That’s right,” Cohen replied.
Cohen was on the verge of ranting—a man teetering on the precipice
of a lifetime’s endeavors all coalescing in a single event. Charlotte could tell that Cohen needed to tell his story, almost as if to ensure that should his ambitious plan fail, his secret knowledge (perhaps even his justification for his actions) might be passed on. And she wanted to encourage him, because if she could keep him talking, stall him a little longer, perhaps the Israelis might get to him before anything worse could happen.
“Luckily, Moses did agree to Akhenaton’s request. But Moses feared an even more calamitous reprisal against those who’d always believed in the one true god: an industrious and mysterious group of Semitic tribes tens of thousands strong who had lived in the Nile Delta for over four centuries.”
“The Israelites?” Charlotte said.
“Very good,” he said approvingly. “After secreting the temple relics
north and preparing them for transport across the Sinai, Moses secretly went to the elders of the Israelite tribes. He knew that their ancestral beliefs traced back to a great patriarch named Abraham, who legend told had
