Sizing each other up like a pair of boxers, the two men extended cautious handshakes. "Glad to have you onboard, Abbas," Mendoza said. "We need a Muslim on the team, especially in this part of the world."

"How do you know I'm a Muslim, Dr. Mendoza?"

Leo winked. "Welcome to our little team, Abbas. Dr. Mendoza may be an anthropologist, but he's also a spy. He works for CNI, the Spanish version of the American CIA. He probably knew your entire family history before we arrived ... just like you probably knew his."

Abbas grinned. "How long have you known about me, Cardinal?"

"Since Morelli briefed me in Rome while we were waiting for our flight to Istanbul. You work for MIT, the Turkish National Security Organization."

"That's true, Cardinal, and I'm proud to say that I am a true patriot of a country that has done much for me and my family. As you may already know, military service is compulsory here in Turkey ... just like it is in Israel. I come from a poor family, and when I left the military, MIT paid for my education. After I received my PhD in archaeology from Cambridge, I went to work for the Turkish Ministry of Antiquities, but in addition to my job of making sure that none of our historical treasures are smuggled out of the country, I am also tasked with the job of keeping an eye on visiting academicians. I guess you could say that I'm really more of a policeman, because I try not to dabble too much in international intrigue."

Abbas paused as he glanced over at Morelli. "I can't believe you never let on that you knew who I really worked for all these years. I hope you know that my friendship has always been genuine, Bishop."

"Of course," Morelli replied, "and part of that friendship was not letting on that I knew who you worked for. If I had ever mentioned that I knew you worked for MIT, you would have been forced to report it to your superiors, and they in turn would have been forced to replace you with another. I couldn't afford to risk losing both a friend and one of the finest archaeologists I've ever worked with over some silly cloak and dagger nonsense. By the way, I have to confess that I once stole a coin I found here in Turkey."

"You, Bishop?"

"Yes. I put it in my pocket one day after I found it beneath an ancient aqueduct. I forgot about it and walked right through customs with it. I kept meaning to send it back." Morelli reached into his pocket and tossed the ancient Roman coin to Abbas, but instead of catching it, he let it fall to the ground. With his trademark grin, Abbas looked around and bent down to pick it up.

"Hey, look what I found. An ancient Roman coin just lying on the ground next to a megalithic temple. It will take years to find out how this thing ended up here." The group burst out laughing as Abbas stuffed the coin into his pocket and smiled back at Morelli.

"Now that we have that out of the way," Mendoza said, "why don't you all follow me?" Trailing along behind Mendoza, the group approached the first monolithic circle as they moved deeper into a cordoned-off area connected by various wooden scaffolds, ladders, and walkways that extended throughout a site that stretched over twenty acres.

Entering the largest circle, Leo reached out and ran his hand over the smooth surface of one of the towering stone giants. Above his head, carvings of animals covered the gigantic block of stone, but strangely they all seemed to be well defined without the usual effects from erosion seen at other ancient sites. In fact, it looked almost as if they had just been carved.

"Has anyone noticed that these carvings look almost new, Javier?" Leo asked.

"A very astute observation, Cardinal. The reason they look like that is because they've been buried for almost twelve thousand years ... protected from the elements as it were. Whoever built this complex buried it soon after its construction."

"But why would they do that? I mean, it must have taken years to build all of this, especially using the kinds of primitive tools they had back then."

"Right again, Leo," Mendoza continued, "which is why the sudden abandonment of this site is so puzzling. But what's even more puzzling is the question of why it was built in the first place."

"Have you found any evidence of a nearby settlement?" Morelli asked, poking around in the dirt next to one of the pillars.

"None yet. We haven't had time to explore the surrounding countryside."

Abbas kicked at the earth with his boot. "If the remains of a settlement still exist it will be much harder to find. Unless the dwellings of those who built this place were made from stone, finding them would require years of digging down through layers of the surrounding strata, looking for dark patterns that would indicate where rotted timbers once supported something like a primitive hut."

"He's right," Mendoza said. "It took hundreds of years for those studying the pyramids to finally realize that all the small stone structures buried in the sand nearby were actually the homes of the builders. One thing we've been able to learn so far about this site is that the builders of these stone structures made bread, which means they probably grew some form of domesticated wheat."

"How did you discover that?" Leo asked.

"Grinding stones. They're all over the place. They used them to grind the wheat into flour."

"So they grew their own wheat?"

"Not necessarily, Cardinal. Wild wheat also grew in this area, but there are indications that it was domesticated here. Dr. Diaz is on his way here to check out that part of the puzzle, and he's brought an assistant to help him."

"An assistant ... who?"

Mendoza's smile reminded Leo of a mischievous child. "Evita's with him, Leo."

"Oh ... that would make sense." Leo glanced up at the parking area, as if he expected to see her walking toward him through the dusty haze. "When will they be arriving?"

"They're already here," Mendoza said, his smile growing. "They're busy getting settled into the house we rented in Sanliurfa. It's large enough for all of us, so you'll have a warm place to sleep tonight."

Pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket, Morelli looked out over the ruins and wiped the grit from his forehead. "Sounds good to me. I wasn't looking forward to camping out here anyway. Too many snakes. By the way, has anyone heard from Lev? The Carmela was due to dock in Patmos yesterday."

"Patmos?" Abbas's eyes widened. "What's the professor doing in Patmos?"

Morelli cast a quick glance at Leo before answering. "There may be something there that could help us in our search here."

"Ah, the island where John wrote the Book of Revelation." Abbas paused as he felt a shudder run down his spine. "I believe I see a picture beginning to form."

CHAPTER 6.

For the rest of the afternoon the group combed the site, looking for clues as to why Eduardo had chosen to stop at this particular archaeological dig before heading across the Iraqi border to his new home in Babylon. So far, nothing had occurred to warrant the fear everyone had felt earlier when they first approached the area. It seemed the only one who had been affected by contact with the site had been the Coptic priest, and although Leo and Morelli were also priests, they had taken the precaution of blessing the site before entering. So far so good.

After observing a young student carefully brushing dirt from some ancient pottery shards, Leo climbed from a narrow excavation trench and walked over to where Morelli was standing. "I don't know how we can continue this when we don't even know what we're looking for."

"I know," Morelli said. "It's like waiting to be struck by lightning. This site is much larger than I imagined. It could take years of searching to discover what Eduardo was looking for, not to mention the fact that he may have already discovered it. There's also the possibility that the object we seek is no object at all, but something else. Until we have something more concrete to go on, this search is an exercise in futility."

"I agree, Anthony. We could be staring right at whatever it is we're looking for and not recognize it." Leo paused in the swirling orange haze created by the sun's fading light as it began to settle over the hills to the west. Moistening his handkerchief with some bottled water, he wiped the fine grit from his face and shook the dust from his hair. "You know, Anthony, this place kind of reminds me of the chapel we discovered under the Vatican. Not in the physical sense of course, but in the fact that it may hold messages from the past that are meant for us now, in the present."

"All ancient sites hold messages from the past, Leo, but I know what you mean. There's something special about this place, but there are other equally special places like this scattered all over the region. If only we knew why he chose this spot and not one of the others." Morelli paused, thinking. "Maybe someone else chose it for him."

Both men thought for a moment as they looked out over the darkening vista that extended all the way to the Syrian border. In the distance, they could see lights from homes across the border switching on in the gloaming to beat back the approaching darkness as men trudged home from the fields to eat supper with their families. As the silent peace settled over the area, Leo noticed that several of the students had gathered behind them.

"Uh ... Cardinal Leo, could we speak with you for a moment?" a thin young man asked.

Looking back at the group of students, Leo was suddenly reminded of the years he had spent teaching history at Boston College. "Yes ... of course. What can I do for you?"

"Well, sir," the young man continued, looking back at the others, "we were wondering if you could tell us about the code."

"I take it you're talking about the code in the Bible."

"Yes, sir," the student smiled. "That's the one. We'd all love to hear the story from someone who's actually experienced it."

Leo felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of being able to engage young minds once again. "It would be my pleasure. Come on ... gather around."

Leo paused as more students climbed from trenches and made their way over to join the group. "Let me see. Where do I begin? Do any of you know who Professor Lev Wasserman is?"

"He's a famous Israeli archaeologist!" a girl with frizzy red hair called out.

"That's right," Leo smiled. "But in addition to holding a PhD in archaeology, he's also a world-class mathematician and one of the world's leading experts in group theory, a field of mathematics that underlies quantum physics. A few years ago, he was reading about the Genius of Vilna, an eighteenth-century Jewish sage in Lithuania who predicted 9/11 to the day and spoke about the possibility of a code being embedded within the Torah. Lev became fascinated with the subject and learned that, throughout history, many Bible scholars had been trying to prove that there was a secret code in the Old Testament. He convinced a group of scientists at the university in Jerusalem that they could find it using modern code-breaking software, and to their surprise, they did. Their work has been replicated by the code breakers at the National Security Administration in the United States using their most powerful computers, and their paper on the subject has passed academic peer review and has been published in leading scientific journals."

"Doesn't this code have the power to predict the future?" the red-haired girl asked.

"It's complicated." Leo lifted one foot up on a rock and leaned forward. "The first evidence of the encoding was discovered in the Pentateuch, the original five books of the Old Testament as they were handed down to Moses ... otherwise known as the Torah. The code only exists in Hebrew, because that was the original language of the Bible as it was first written. Evidently, sixty years ago a rabbi from Eastern Europe noticed that if he skipped fifty letters, and then another fifty, and then another fifty after that, the word Torah was spelled out at the beginning of the book of Genesis. He then used that same skip sequence again and spelled out the word Torah in the Book of Exodus. To his amazement, the word Torah was also embedded at the beginning of the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But that was as far as he got."

A student in the back of the group raised his hand. "What happened?"

"Nothing until the invention of the modern computer," Leo explained. "Lev and his team found additional hidden messages by using computers to alter the sequencing before scanning the pages both horizontally and vertically, like a crossword puzzle. That's when they found words grouped together on the same page that mentioned historical events that occurred after the Bible was written. For instance, words like airplane and Wright brothers appeared together with phrases like they will fly and first flight at Kitty Hawk.

Leo paused as he felt the rush of joy he had always experienced when students were transfixed by his words. "To me the code is like God whispering in our ears," he continued. "To date, Lev and his team have discovered passages referring to things like both World Wars, the Holocaust, men landing on the moon, 9/11, the Gulf War, even the exact date of the collision of the Shoemaker-Levi comet with Jupiter. All of these events were encoded thousands of years ago in the Old Testament. Allowing for all the mathematical variations, there's no limitation to the amount of information that may be encoded within the Bible."

"You'll have to excuse me, Cardinal," the underfed-looking boy exclaimed, "but all of this sounds a little fantastical to me."

Leo nodded. "That's what I thought until I heard that Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds to ever grace this planet, believed there was a hidden code in the Bible. He even learned Hebrew and spent most of his life trying to find it, but he lacked the one essential tool that would have led him to its discovery-a computer. Think of the Bible as a cryptogram sent to us by God himself ... a cryptogram with a series of time locks that could not be opened until certain events came to pass. Obviously, one of these events is the invention of the computer. This one leap in technology has enabled scientists and cryptographers who've been working on the code to discover hidden messages placed there thousands of years ago by an intelligence greater than any that exists here on Earth. I'm convinced that there's another Bible within the Bible. It's like a massive puzzle in layers, similar to a three-dimensional hologram. Some believe the Bible itself is a computer program left to us by the Almighty, and there are an infinite number of combinations and permutations yet to be discovered. Even with all of our computers and code-breaking programs, no one could have encoded the Bible the way it was done thousands of years ago."

"Just how much information is there?" a petite, doe-eyed girl asked.

"All of our past and all of our future. The name of every person who has lived before us, who is living now, and who is yet to be born. All of our greatest historical events, plagues, disasters, wars and future wars. All are encoded in the Old Testament."

The red-haired girl twisted her lips as she looked up at Leo. "Sounds impossible, Cardinal."

"Yes it does, but you'd better be prepared to argue with some pretty knowledgeable people who have done the research and proved its existence with a 99.998 percent probability. A group of renowned scientists who worked at the NSA actually set out to disprove the theory of the code, but instead, what they found sent chills up their spines. They all saw the hand of God at work."

The thin young man stood and pulled at his scraggly beard. "Thank you, Cardinal. I think I can speak for all of us when I say it's been an honor meeting you. I have just one more question."

"Go ahead. I'm enjoying this."

"Have you thought about using the code to locate whatever it is you're searching for out here?"

"We have, but the code has been like a black hole when it comes to details about this area. One of the things people misunderstand is that sometimes you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it in the code. I guess that's God's way of keeping us from knowing the future and trying to become godlike ourselves."

Turning away from the group, Leo saw Morelli grinning at him. "I can tell you miss your teaching days, Leo."

"That I do, old friend. They make me think, and that last question made me wonder why we haven't thought to speak to the villagers who worked here for Eduardo."

"I guess I'm getting old." Morelli slapped his forehead. "That's probably one of the first things we should have done. Abbas said the workers were all members of an extended Kurdish family who live up the road in the small village of Orencik. We can go there tomorrow."

Looking at his watch, Leo nodded his head. "Tomorrow sounds good. I don't see any point in spending any more time here today. Where did Mendoza get off too?"

"I'm right behind you," Mendoza called out. "I heard what you just said, and I agree. We need a new plan and it's getting late. Why don't you follow us back into town? I think we could all use a shower and some hot food. I always think better on a full stomach."

Dusting themselves off, the entire group trudged back to their cars, and soon the small caravan was headed back down the D400 highway toward the ancient city of Sanliurfa forty miles away. With its hot dry summers and cool wet winters, the city had been known by many names throughout history. Most locals still referred to it by the older name-Urfa, the name it had gone by since Byzantine days until it was changed in 1984 to Sanliurfa, meaning Glorious Urfa. Situated on a wide flat plain between the Syrian border and the Euphrates River, Urfa was said to be the biblical city of Ur of the Chaldeans-the birthplace of the prophet Abraham and possibly Job, although many historians place the city of Ur in southern Iraq. It had also once been called Edessa by the Greeks, home of the first holy Christian icon, a handkerchief on which Jesus wiped his face.

As with most Turkish cities the romantic old section of town was centered on an ancient bazaar where Arab and Turkish villagers dressed in traditional garb arrived every morning to sell fresh produce and other handmade wares. Exotic cooking smells drifted through the quarter, wafting through open windows, and as the line of vehicles entered the city and passed through the bazaar quarter, the occupants saw harried waiters carrying trays piled high with food to low-lying tables where they spread everything out on newspapers to be eaten with fingers. It was a far cry from the modern air-conditioned restaurants and apartment buildings that lined broad leafy avenues just a few streets away.

In this milieu of antiquity mixed with modernity, the line of vehicles continued on, passing through narrow streets into a quieter part of the city filled with traditional mud brick homes built around enclosed central courtyards that contained dripping stone fountains next to tiled urns filled with flowers. These little oases of domesticity provided a quiet respite away from the heat and noise of the streets outside, bringing a sigh of relief to the dust-covered group when they finally rolled to a stop and entered the large three-story house Mendoza had rented for their stay in the city.

After being shown to their rooms, Leo headed straight for the shower. Adjusting the temperature of the water to a level just below scalding, he immersed himself in the pounding stream for a full five minutes, and after lathering up, he could actually see the fine, orange-colored grit flowing from his body and circling down through the drain. When he finally felt clean, he inched the water temperature a few degrees cooler and rinsed off before stepping out and wiping the wet sand from his ears with a hand towel. It was a stark reminder of why he preferred doing his research in the comfort of a library, far from the heat and dust of the archaeological digs that Morelli always found so fascinating.

After pulling on a clean white dress shirt and a pair of gray slacks, he walked from his room out into an airy, red-tiled hallway and stopped to peer out over a cast iron railing into the shadowed greenery of the central courtyard below. Following the sound of voices tinged with laughter, he descended a set of narrow, white-washed stairs that curved downward in a tunnel-like spiral, until finally he stepped out into an enclosed space of towering white walls highlighted by subdued yellow lighting.

At the far end of the room, large oriental tapestries hung above a cave-like alcove lined with silken, multi-colored pillows that formed a wide seating area, and a fresh breeze on his face brought his attention to a row of Moroccan-inspired arches draped in white gossamer curtains that flowed in and out into the courtyard beyond, as if the room had lungs.

It felt as if he had stepped into another world-an ancient, magical, breathtaking respite from a long day filled with uncertainty, and he found himself wanting a drink, any drink, just as long as it was cold and made his nose feel numb after a few sips.

A gentle hand found his neck, and when he turned, he saw a familiar pair of liquid brown eyes staring up at him.

Evita Vargas giggled. "Hello, my love."

"Evita!" Leo reached out and took her in his arms. Though it had only been a few months, it seemed like it had been years since he had last seen her. He felt lightheaded-a man past middle age, once again experiencing the schoolboy pangs of love usually reserved for the young. The air smelled sweeter, and there was a faint hint of music in the air that only he seemed to hear whenever she was around.

"Come on, dinner is waiting," she said, leading him by the hand through the tall billowy curtains out into the courtyard where, under a star-filled sky, flickering candles painted dancing yellow patterns down the length of a long, linen-covered table. After they took their seats next to the others, a servant carrying a large tray began handing out ice-filled glasses containing a clear, sparkling beverage topped with wedges of lime and sprigs of green mint leaves.

"What's this?" Leo asked.

"It's a mojito," Evita winked. "It's a Cuban drink made from white rum, sugar, sparkling water, mint, lime ... all the yummy things you like. It was Hemingway's favorite cocktail. I had a feeling you might need something with a little Latin influence this evening after digging around all day in a 12,000 year old megalithic temple."

Stroking Evita's long black hair, Leo exhaled slowly and sipped his drink. He felt totally satisfied to be here in this place at this time, living in the moment and not wanting to think about the next day as his nose grew slightly numb-a signal that the mojito was having the desired effect.

As trays of food began to flow from the kitchen, overpowering smells of cooking reminded Leo that he had not eaten for hours. Soon the table was filled with steaming ceramic dishes overflowing with Midye dolmasi, mussels stuffed with spiced rice and served with lemon. These were followed by several large serving bowls swimming with levek pilakisi, a Turkish seafood stew of simmering sea bass, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onion, and garlic.

Looking down the table, Leo saw Dr. Raul Diaz, his face highlighted by a flickering candle as he sat locked in an animated discussion with Morelli. Catching the Spanish scientist's eye, Leo lifted his glass in his direction and smiled. With a blank expression, the doctor returned the liquid salute with a glass of red wine before resuming his apparent battle of wits with Morelli. As usual, Diaz was displaying his disdain for social niceties, but since he was one of the world's leading experts in molecular biology, most people overlooked this one flaw in his behavior.

Mendoza had been right. They needed help from the Spanish team-all of them, for even though all of the Israeli members of the Bible Code Team were onboard the Carmela in the nearby Aegean Sea, they needed more boots on the ground here in Turkey. Somehow Mendoza and his team had managed to arrive just in the nick of time, and Leo was glad they were there.

Standing at the end of the table, Mendoza tapped on his glass. "Cardinal, if you would be so kind as to do the honors."

"Oh ... yes, of course." As the unwelcome signal traveled down his tired legs and urged his muscles to move, Leo stood with a grunt and made the sign of the cross over those gathered around the table. "Let us pray. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from your bounty. We ask that you watch over those who have gathered here together in your name, and that you open our eyes, for our purpose here has yet to be revealed. We also beseech you to guide us out of the darkness, for we are blind to your wishes, and it is only by your light that we will walk down the true path you have set before us. Through Christ our Lord, Amen."

Resuming his seat across from Abbas, Leo could hear the man muttering the words, Bizmillah ar-Rahman, ar-Raheem. It was a traditional blessing all Muslims said individually before beginning a meal.

"I have to say," Leo said, shaking out his napkin, "that it's very heartening to see a group of people from so many different faiths breaking bread together around the same table."

"It helps when you're with a group that's united against a common enemy, Cardinal," Abbas added. "No matter how profound our ideological differences may be, I think most of us understand that we must place our petty squabbles aside and stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the coming darkness ... a darkness I fear may soon envelop the entire world. If we could all only learn to embrace our differences, a united mankind could be a very powerful force against any threat."

Leo smiled through the paraffin-infused smoke given off by the candles. "I believe your words match those spoken to us by the Holy Father the day before we left Rome."

"I've heard that the pope is a very wise man, and that his battles against the forces of darkness are legendary. It's unfortunate that the political and religious rhetoric we've been bombarded with on a daily basis seems to advocate violence as the only solution to problems that have plagued humanity for literally thousands of years. If people could just stop for a moment and emulate our little gathering here tonight, our little planet might be able to step back from the brink of a very deep abyss."

Mendoza retrieved a bottle of Spanish wine from a wooden case and set it on the table. "Unfortunately, politics and religion have always resembled blood sports in my view. My way or the highway! Death to the unbelievers!" Mendoza raised his glass in a mock salute. "As a matter of fact, using sports as an analogy isn't so farfetched," he continued. "Just throw on some different-colored jerseys and you have a soccer stadium full of people primed to fight one another in the name of team spirit. Every year, all around the world, people die in post-game rioting just because their favorite team lost. It's all very tribal, and if you can't expect people to come together for something as benign as a soccer game without killing one another, then good luck in bringing warring religions together around a campfire and expecting them to sing Kumbaya. With all the increasing religious tensions that have been building up over the past few years, world peace continues to remain an insurmountable goal that's dangled before our eyes in a cruel taunt."

"What about you, Cardinal?" Abbas said. "What are your thoughts on all of this?"

"Well, I've always said that if you want to solve a problem you have to go after the root cause, but when you're dealing with a problem that's become so global, things tend to get a little confused in the fog of differing world viewpoints. It could be that we're finally beginning to see some of the darker after-effects of the information age, especially now that we can all disagree with one another at the speed of light from behind the cloak of anonymity provided by the internet. Who knows? But there is one common denominator I think we can all agree on. It seems that most of the unrest we're seeing now is centered on the Middle East."