The Sacred Cipher Read Online Free Page A

corner. For some reason, it was covered over, and the room was forgotten. Hard
     to believe, with all this nice furniture.”
    “Hard to believe; that’s an understatement,” said Bohannon as he began rifling through
     the files faster and faster. Behind him, he heard Maybry move toward him.
    “Do you know what this place is?” asked Bohannon, turning to face Maybry with a pack
     of file folders in his hand. “It’s the office of Dr. Louis Klopsch, the first president
     of the Bowery Mission. These files, these cabinets, appear to be filled with Klopsch’s
     records, the ledgers of the mission, and copies of all his correspondence.”
    Maybry, a trusted compatriot who had worked with Bohannon and the mission on several
     other projects, walked over to one of the cabinets and began searching through the
     drawers himself. “You mean this stuff has been hidden up here all these years?”
    “It could get even more interesting, now,” Bohannon said, pulling a file folder out
     of one of the drawers. “I think this is the combination for the safe.”
    Both men turned to face the other side of the room, where the immense, antique steel
     safe dominated. The decorative touches at the corners had muted over time. The safe
     had to be more than eight feet wide and five feet high, barely under the low ceiling,
     and a good three feet deep. It had double doors on the front that, when opened, would
     give access to the entire safe. In the center of each door was a raised, decorative
     design, blooming, steel geraniums, red paint still dully visible in the crevices of
     the flower’s petals.
    “If he kept his ledgers and records in these file cabinets,” said Maybry, turning
     to look at the oak cabinets, “I wonder what he could have kept in a safe that large.”
    Bohannon drew a sheet of paper out of the file folder and stepped up to the steel
     door, his uncertainty and anticipation growing. It took a moment, but he realized
     that the dial for the combination lock had to be sitting under the large, floral-design
     ornament on the front of the door. Pressing here, pushing there, Bohannon finally
     located the spring switch, and the floral design swung away. He spun in the combination,
     heard the bolt drop, and pulled hard on the twin doors.
    Bohannon moved more than the doors did. “Here, grab one side.”
    With Maybry tugging on one side and Bohannon on the other, the doors creaked, squeaked,
     and barely moved. Then, like opening a vacuum-sealed can, they swung apart with a
whoosh
.
    Bohannon stepped from behind the door and stood in front of the safe. His mouth dropped,
     his eyes popped, and his breath stopped—and not from the accumulated dust.
    The safe was filled, packed to the edges, with what looked to be dozens of museum-quality
     books, scrolls, manuscripts, and pamphlets. There was more gold gilt in that safe
     than one would find at a convention of military despots.
Without question
, thought Bohannon,
whatever the specifics of the contents, this collection could prove to be priceless
.
    “What are you going to do now?” Maybry asked. There was no answer from Bohannon.

    Nondescript shadows in the night, the four men descended the gangplank. Few lights
     shone at this end of the vast dock on Staten Island. And at 3:30 in the morning, few
     people were moving in any part of the facility.
    With the silent sweep of a serpent, the four men melted into the darkness separating
     staggering stacks of cargo containers. They paused at an unobserved junction.
    “You know your targets. You have your directions.” Sayeed Farouk once again inspected
     the three men before him. He could find no detail that would raise an alarm. All of
     them were dressed in the colorless work clothes of veteran seamen. Though all of them
     were hardened in body and devoted in ideology, none of them projected the frenzy of
     a zealot. They looked foreign, but not frightening.
    “Remember why we are here.” Farouk looked each of