The Sacred Cipher Read Online Free

Spurgeon’s treasures.
     “A big safe.”

1
THE PRESENT • NEW YORK CITY
    Tom Bohannon looked at the gap between the ladder and the scaffold. It wasn’t that
     far. Tim Maybry, the construction manager, had just done it, stepped off the ladder
     with a spring, landing on the wooden plank while grabbing the metal scaffold frame
     with both hands. It wasn’t that far. But once he stepped off the ladder, there was
     no going back. It was either land on the wooden plank or land on the hard, ceramic
     tile floor thirty feet below.
    Bohannon, slightly overweight, but still fit in his late fifties, stood on the ladder
     and knew two things. He wasn’t going to get on the scaffold without getting off the
     ladder. And if he wanted to see what was on the other side, what had so excited his
     construction manager, he needed to get on the scaffold. Eyes fixed on the wooden plank,
     he stepped into space. A flashing moment of panic, and he was there, grabbing the
     metal scaffold, pulling in a deep breath. Looking to the left, he saw Tim waiting,
     smiling. “Okay,” Bohannon said with a shrug. “Okay, I’ll be right there.”
    Keeping his eyes straight ahead, Bohannon inched his way along the plank on the scaffolding
     and ducked into a very snug space behind the organ pipes. Maybry was in front of him,
     leading the way through the tight, dark crawl space between the pipes and the wall.
     Maybry disappeared to the right. Reaching the same spot, Bohannon peeked into a short,
     narrow crevice. He followed Maybry, shimmying through a hole that had been punched
     in the wall.
    Bohannon hit the floor with a thud. He didn’t care. His eyes had already been scanning
     the room, flashing back and forth, astounded at what he was seeing, a secret room
     hidden behind the organ pipes in the chapel of the Bowery Mission.

    The room was tucked in behind the organ pipes, hard against the connecting wall of
     what had been a casket maker’s factory a hundred years ago, suspended, high up in
     the vaulted ceiling, at the very rear of the Bowery Mission’s chapel. Coated with
     decades of dust, Tom Bohannon, executive director of the mission, saw that the room
     was furnished in antiques: a large, oak desk against the wall facing the organ pipes,
     with a matching chair; on the side, a row of six, four-drawer oak filing cabinets;
     and against the far wall, a large, antique safe that occupied the entire wall. The
     room was small, the ceiling less than six feet off the floor. Bohannon had to stoop
     to maneuver his way around the small space. Within moments, he and Maybry were covered
     in soot and dust.
    “We found it by accident, this morning,” Maybry said as Bohannon crossed to the rank
     of filing cabinets and began opening the drawers. “One of the workers dropped his
     hammer, and it must have fallen through a crack and into the room. When he went behind
     the organ pipes and couldn’t find it, he realized there must be something behind this
     wall. You know these guys. You’ve got to watch them all the time.”
    “Is Henry Chang running this job?” Bohannon asked as he rifled through the file folders
     in another drawer.
    “Not on this job,” Maybry said, wiping his hand through the dust on the desk. “I’ve
     got a crew of guys from the Middle East—Lebanese they said, but hey, who knows these
     days. They must need the work because their bid came in under the Chinese. Anyway,
     my foreman came up as the guy was digging a hole in the wall, and here we are.”
    Bohannon started working on the second cabinet, flipping through the files, his back
     to Maybry. “How could anybody ever get in here?” Bohannon asked as he opened another
     drawer.
    “This room is part of the original building, before they purchased the casket maker’s
     building behind,” said Maybry. “Before the organ bellows was removed, there must have
     been a way to get up here to clean the bellows. It looks like the door was over here
     in the