“You know, Paul, I’d be fired for telling you that NSA is watching you. It’s all bogus. I have your back because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Are you on a secure line?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here doing research, that’s all — nothing to do with encryption or covert code-breaking. Put that in the damn report and tell Bill Gray to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I haven’t seen Bill. I believe it comes from somewhere else. The CIA is following someone’s inquiries. Even Ron Beckman doesn’t know.”
Marcus was silent.
“Whatever you’re doing over there, it has caught the interest of someone. I’m not sure who that someone is, but it’s got far-reaching tentacles.”
“One of the computers I was working on in the university was hacked. Did it come from NSA?”
Alicia said nothing for a few seconds. “Yes, but I see you caught it quickly. We couldn’t get through the second wall.”
“Is the hacking continuing?”
“Not to my knowledge. But that doesn’t mean the agency isn’t curious about how you’re working with Israel. The primary reason is the Internet chatter in certain Middle Eastern circles. Blame it on your new celebrity status, the Newton papers, the Mossad’s interest in your files, or most likely, your talents to create or detect cyber-sabotage. The combination of it all, not to mention the timing, certainly would make some people in high places very curious about you.”
“Why are you risking your job to tell me this?”
“Because you worked here. You’re one of us for crying out loud! Some of us spoke at the funeral for Tiffany and Jennifer. You’re trying to intercede on my family’s behalf to help my niece, Brandi.” Her voice became strained, words weighted with sadness.
“Thank you for telling me. Are you okay?”
There was another pause. Marcus could hear Alicia exhale. “Dad has pancreatic cancer. It’s not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Like everything else in his life, he’s taking it in stride. My father is an amazing person. It’s never been about him. It’s always about how he could make it better for me or my sister…or Mom. Or anyone, for that matter.”
“Maybe I’ll get a chance to meet him.” Marcus heard a sniffle.
“Goodnight, Paul.”
“Thanks for calling, Alicia.” As she disconnected, Marcus gripped the balcony railing and watched lightning flicker above Mount Olive. A dark storm in the eastern skies stalked over Jerusalem, moving in silently then erupting in thunder and blocking light from the heavens.
TWENTY-ONE
For the next week, Marcus reported to the library and worked twelve-hour days poring through Isaac Newton’s papers. To further protect the computer where Marcus was doing his research, the university and the library’s IT department added firewalls, changed passwords, created a dummy clone and rerouted access.
Marcus still had reservations.
“To catch a mouse, you have to set a trap,” he mumbled, layering in decoy emails and fake subject lines. In one he wrote: Physicist Abromov’s arrival from Moscow to Tel Aviv pending transfer… “Come get the bait,” he whispered.
Then he began reading through the countless words that Newton had written, hypothesizing and leveraging dialogue and text from the Bible into repeating patterns. The further Marcus dug, the more fascinated he became with what Newton had discovered in the ancient passages. He was becoming even more impressed with Newton’s remarkable gift. He started to think that somewhere in the math, parables, early calendars, iconic imagery, and puzzling symbols, that maybe there were hidden predictions to be found.
The more Marcus uncovered, the exhaustive science and Newton’s fastidious attention to detail — the scientist’s ability to find, correlate and understand the connections from Old Testament script with events in the New Testament, was beyond the capacity of anyone he’d ever known. It became apparent that Newton was seeking an innermost set of laws — the secrets to an intricate plan weaving together three-thousand-year-old cryptograms.
Late in the afternoon on the fifth day, Marcus wasn’t sure if he was beginning to hallucinate or if he was starting to see something rise to the surface of the massive amount of text. He had a dull headache, but he didn’t want to stop working. He used every mathematical and decoding skill he’d honed to figure the equations and examine the science from the hand of Newton. Marcus scrutinized how Newton brought forth data from the movement of the planets, the equinoxes, lunar and solar eclipses, and the biblical events in alliance with prophecies that seemed to fit into sequential patterns from the Old Testament to the New Testament.
Marcus tried to find momentum, a nexus that drew sequences into a central theme of what those actions meant at the time they happened and how they may have an influence on things yet to happen. He rubbed his temples and read Newton’s words aloud:
“‘The prophecies of Daniel are related to one another, as if they were but several parts of one general prophecy, given at several times. The first is the easiest to be understood, and every following prophecy adds something new to the former. The first was given in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in the second year of his reign, but the King forgot his dream. Then it was given again to Daniel in a dream, and by him revealed to the King.’”
Marcus sipped room temperature tea, read from the batch of Newton’s handwritten papers in the folder, and then returned to Newton’s words that had been scanned, filed and displayed on the plasma screen in front of his work desk.
‘In the next vision, which is of the four beasts, the prophecy of the four Empires is repeated, with several new additions; such as are the two wings of the Lion, the three ribs in the mouth of the Bear, and the four wings and four heads of the Leopard. Also, the eleven horns of the fourth Beast, and the son of man coming in the clouds of Heaven, to the Ancient of Days sitting in judgment.’
“How are you doing?” asked Jacob Kogen, entering the room. “Anything more, or is it getting increasingly difficult to make sense out of it as you proceed?”
Marcus looked up from the screen, his eyes burning. “Newton’s genius was off the charts. His skill at using mathematics, astronomy, multiple types of calendars, connected to three thousand years of biblical history, and his ability to link it with a margin contingent on whether he was working in Hebrew, Greek, Armenian or Roman calendars, is beyond human comprehension. His grasp of how the events of the Bible seem to fit in a set of moveable laws is astounding.”
“Moveable?”
“As in over the course of time and human events. Through the timeline, from central Europe, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Babylonia and the rest of the Middle East, it’s like looking at one enormous chessboard. The players: kings, queens, bishops, rooks, knights, and pawns, are all given opportunities to play the game with a set of tenets. But, as in chess, it too often becomes a real war; and the lust for land, power and conquest tosses out the rules. The prevailing set of laws that Newton seems to have been uncovering — the symbols, language, and subtext that he’s finding from book to book in the Bible, are the buried cornerstones in the Old and New Testaments.”
“What kind of laws?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“God’s laws, perhaps.”
“That’s apparent in Newton’s writings. Also, he spent years studying alchemy, and I’ve been reading many of his papers on the subject.”
Jacob smiled. “Turning lead into gold, the Philosopher’s Stone, perchance?”
“I don’t know.”
“Many alchemists, maybe Newton included, are thought to have died from the effects of mercury poisoning because the elixirs they consumed, the substance of transforming lead to gold, they believed might give them lives stretching into a second century. Some scholars suggest that the transmutation of lead into gold is metaphoric for the transmutation of the physical body with the goal of attaining immortality.”