Farhi added. “And, perhaps, re-hidden—after Jacques de Molay burned at the stake. There is one other problem, however, that has also discouraged me from pursuing any exploration.”
“The tunnels are blocked by water?” I had grim memories of my escape from the Great Pyramid.
“Possibly. But even if they are not, one record I found made reference to doors that are sealed. What was once open may now be closed.”
“Determined men can force any locked door, with enough muscle or gunpowder,” Jericho said.
“Not gunpowder!” Farhi said. “Do you want to arouse the city?”
“Muscle, then.”
“What if the Muslims hear us poking around down there?” I asked.
“That,” the banker said, “would be most unfortunate.”
¤
¤
¤
My rifle was complete. Jericho had carefully pasted two of Miriam’s hairs on its telescope to give an aiming point, and when I tested the gun outside the city I found I could reliably hit a plate at two hundred yards. A musket, in contrast, was inaccurate after fifty.
But when I took the piece up to watch for the French brigands from our rooftop, peering until my eye ached, I saw nothing. Had they left?
I fantasized that they hadn’t, that Alessandro Silano was here, secretly directing them, and that I could capture and interrogate him about Astiza.
But it was as if the gang had never existed.
Miriam has used bright brass to inset two replica seraphim on each side of the wooden stock as patch boxes where I kept my greased wadding. Pushed by the bullet, it cleans the barrel of powder resi-due with each shot. The seraphim crouched with wings outstretched like those on the Ark. She also made me a new tomahawk. I was so pleased I gave a dubious Jericho some instruction on how to win at
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
the custom to cloister women in Jerusalem. “She knows old legends that bore me,” Jericho admitted. “She sees things I don’t, or won’t.
And I don’t want to leave her alone with the French thieves skulking about.”
“We agree on that,” I said.
“Besides, the two of you need a woman’s sense,” she said.
“It’s important we move stealthily,” Jericho added. “Miriam said you have red Indian skills.”
Truth be told, my red Indian skills had consisted primarily of avoiding the savages whenever I could, and buying them off with presents when I couldn’t. My few scrapes with them had been terrifying. But I had exaggerated my frontier exploits to Miriam (a bad habit of mine), and it wouldn’t do to set the record straight now.
Farhi also came, dressed in black. “My presence may be even more important than I thought,” he said. “There are Jewish mysteries too, and since our conversation I’ve been studying what the Templars studied, including the numerology of the Jewish kabbalah and its Book of Zohar.”
“Another book? What’s this one for?”
“Some of us believe the Torah, or your Bible, can be read at two levels. One is the stories we all know. The second is that there is another story, a mystery, a sacred story—a story hidden between the lines—embedded in a number code. That is Zohar.”
“The Bible is a code?”
“Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet can be represented by a number, and there are ten more numbers beyond, representing the sacred
“Ten what?”
“
Can this Book of Thoth perhaps be read in the same way? What is its key? We will see.”
t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
7 3
Well, here was more of the same gibberish I’d encountered ever since I’d won the damned Egyptian medallion in Paris. Lunacy, apparently, is contagious. So many people seem to believe in legends, numerology, and mathematical marvels that I’d begun to believe too, even if I could rarely make heads or tails of what people were talking about. But if a disfigured banker like Farhi was willing to muck about in the bowels of the earth because of Jewish numerology, then it seemed worth my time, too.
“Well, welcome. Try to keep up.” I turned to Jericho. “Why are you shouldering a bag of mortar?”
“To brick up whatever we break into. The secret to stealing things is to make it look like no theft has occurred.” That’s the kind of thinking I admire.
Хаос в Ваантане нарастает, охватывая все новые и новые миры...
Александр Бирюк , Александр Сакибов , Белла Мэттьюз , Ларри Нивен , Михаил Сергеевич Ахманов , Родион Кораблев
Фантастика / Исторические приключения / Боевая фантастика / ЛитРПГ / Попаданцы / Социально-психологическая фантастика / Детективы / РПГ