John Lyman - The Secret Chapel

Alon scooped sand back over the motion detector, and the two began heading back down the line of dunes. They were almost to the villa when John noticed the blue flashing lights of an Israeli police vehicle as it raced through the front gate, followed by two dark-brown military Humvees. Holding his hand to his earpiece, Alon said something in Hebrew into the microphone and began running toward the villa while signaling for John to follow.

The vehicles skidded to a halt on the circular gravel driveway in front of the house and several uniformed police officers piled out, dragging two handcuffed men dressed in suits with them. A senior officer approached Alon, and after a brief exchange, everyone headed inside.

“What’s going on?” John asked. “What are all these police doing here?”

“I believe this has something to do with what I was getting ready to tell you about. Come on. Let’s go inside.”

The police led the men through the doors of the main entrance, where they came face-to-face with Lev and the rest of his team standing at the bottom of a winding staircase.

“Are these the two men we called you about, Commander?” Lev asked.

“Yes, sir. The license plate on their car matches the number you gave us and they have pictures of the villa on their digital cameras. We stopped them about twenty miles south of here outside of Tel Aviv.”

Lev patted the police commander on the shoulder. “Nice work, David. Thanks for helping us out.” Lev had known this policeman since he was just a boy, the son of a close friend. “Have they said anything to you?”

“Not a word. Here are their IDs and passports.”

“They’re not Israeli?”

“Look for yourself, Professor. These guys are Swiss Guards from the Vatican.”

The two men in handcuffs shot glances at Leo and John, followed by a quick look back in the direction of the police commander.

“Well, it looks like some of your friends from Rome followed you two here,” Lev said. “Undoubtedly, whomever these men take their orders from knows exactly where you two are.”

John and Leo were speechless. They believed they were free from the intrigue and dangers they had faced in Rome. Now, in the foyer of Lev’s villa in Israel, they had two Vatican security men standing right in front of them.

“What are they going to do with them, Lev?” Leo asked. “Can we speak to them?”

The police commander faced Leo. “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re in our custody now. We can’t allow you to talk to them, but I assure you, we will find out what they are doing in our country. For now, they will be charged with trespassing. After we find out why they were taking pictures of the villa, they may have additional charges added on.”

“Do you know when they arrived from Rome?” Moshe asked.

“According to customs, they checked into the airport three days ago.”

“That’s before we arrived,” John said.

Alon looked at John. “It’s also before we knew you were coming.”

Lev handed the passports back to David. “There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we need to let you do your job and see where that leads us. Thank you for bringing them by, David.”

Ariella stepped forward and gave the police officer some photos the security force at the villa had taken of the men from a hidden rooftop camera. These included pictures of the vehicle’s license plate and one of the men talking on a cell phone.

“One picture is worth a thousand words,” Lev said, looking at the photos in the police commander’s hands. “I sure would like to know who he was talking to.”

The police commander nodded his head. “So would we …we’re working on that. I’ll give you a call, Professor, if we learn anything else that might be of value to you. Shalom.”

“Shalom,” the group responded as the police led the two men away.

“That was amazing,” John said. “If you don’t mind, Alon, I’d like to spend some time learning all I can about the security precautions you guys use.”

The Israelis smiled as Alon slapped John on the back. “Then tomorrow we start with target practice. You’ll be like a soldier when I get through with you. An Israeli-trained soldier.”

“I can’t figure out how they knew we would be here,” Leo said. “These people are really spooky. Father Morelli said our lives would be in danger-that there are dark forces aligned against us. I only hope those forces don’t already have the upper hand.”

“At least we had the upper hand today, Father,” Lev said.

“True, but those men were human. All the motion detectors and weapons in the world are useless if we come up against a supernatural force.”

The others sobered noticeably when Leo mentioned the word supernatural .

Leo looked across the foyer and noticed Daniel walking from the hallway with a sheaf of papers in his hands.

“Professor Wasserman, I think you need to see something.”

“What have you got there, Daniel?”

“It’s a printout of something I just found in that section of the Bible we’ve been trying to decipher for the past two months.”

Lev slipped on his glasses and took the printout from Daniel.

“When were you able to reveal this part of the code?”

“About half an hour ago. I looked around to tell you, but everyone had left.”

As one of the world’s premier code breakers, Daniel was the typical scholar who tended to get so focused on his work that he was oblivious to all outside distractions.

Lev raised the glasses up on top of his head after reading the first page of the printout. “I think we all need to go back downstairs to the command center and have a little meeting.”

Everyone crowded down the narrow stairway into the command center and watched as Lev scrolled through several encoded pages of the Bible at his computer station. He paused to read before looking up at the large screen in the front of the room. “Daniel, can you bring up a map of the area around the Dead Sea on that screen?”

“Sure, Professor.” Daniel punched in coordinates on the keyboard, and the large center screen lit up with a multicolored interactive map of the area.

“Zero in south of the Dead Sea. I want to enlarge that area of the desert.”

Daniel continued to type, causing the display to zoom in on a sun-baked wilderness known as the Negev Desert.

“There,” Lev said, “that’s the area Daniel just pinpointed using the code in the Bible.”

Leo stared at the screen. “What are we looking at, Lev?”

“Since last summer, we’ve been trying to pinpoint the location of something we discovered in the code-a physical place that harbors an evolving disturbance in relation to the balance between good and evil in the world. We also found an encoded reference to an object connected to this disturbance. There’s something out there. It’s probably been there for thousands of years, and we believe it’s very important to none other than Satan himself.”

“Did I hear you correctly, Professor?” John asked. “Did you say something important to Satan ?”

“Yes, very important. Daniel just found the exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of this area, along with several combinations of words spelled out in close proximity to each other embedded in the Bible. According to the code, these coordinates point directly to an area here on earth reserved for Satan. It also states that this area is ferociously guarded by him. There is something of great value to Satan at that location, and that is where we must go.”

The rest of the team stood in stunned silence. They knew the Bible code was leading them somewhere, but they had not prepared themselves for anything like this. They were being led into the heart of the barren Negev Desert, to a place spelled out as Satan’s domain here on earth.