The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [72]
In the shadows across the way from Stern's building on St. Mark's Place loitered two young toughs, cigarettes hanging off their lips. As the party went inside, and lights flickered on in the fourth-floor window of the office, one of the toughs ran off down the street; the other stayed to watch.
Lionel Stern dialed the safe's combination, removed the wooden crate, set it down on his desk, and lifted the cover. The Gerona Zohar was large, nearly two feet square and three inches deep, bound in dark antiquated leather. Stern slipped on a pair of frayed white gloves and opened the cover; the binding creaked like an arthritic elbow.
"Backwards, isn't it?" asked Innes.
"Hebrew reads from right to left; this is the front of the book," said Stern.
"I see," said Innes, wishing he could swallow his fist.
Sparks stared at the parchment of the first page, yellow and crusted with age, densely covered with fading handwritten words.
"Let me see that pad," said Sparks.
Innes handed it to him. Doyle watched Jack: What was he on to?
"Is this a drawing of the Zohar, here?" asked Sparks, pointing to a sketch on the pad's margin: an open, leather-bound book, strikingly similar to the one before them. Matching script scribbled inside its front page.
"Could be," said Doyle.
Sparks took out a magnifying glass, leaned over and examined Stern's drawing then scrutinized the first page of the Gerona Zohar.
"Your father has never seen the Gerona Zohar?" asked Sparks.
"No."
"Then how has he in this sketch exactly reproduced its first • page?"
Sparks handed the glass to Doyle: The minute writing in Rabbi Stern's sketch was identical to the book. Stern examined the two fragments as well.
"I can't account for it," said Stern.
"What do you make of this?" asked Sparks, pointing to a dark shape on the pad drawn over the corner of the book.
"A shadow," said Doyle, looking closer. "A hand. Reaching for the book."
"Did your father ever talk about his dreams?" asked Sparks.
"Dreams? No, not that I can recall."
"What are you driving at, Jack?" asked Doyle.
Sparks looked at the pad and pointed to the drawing of the castle.
"I have seen this black tower before," he said.
"Seen it? Where?"
Sparks looked up at Doyle, hesitant. "In a dream."
"This same tower?"
"I could have sketched this myself."
"Sure it's not some place you saw once that's drifted up through your subconscious?" said Stern.
"Then how do we explain the drawing?" asked Doyle. "You said your father never left New York City."
"He came here from Russia as a young man," said Stern. "Perhaps something he saw there or along the way."
"Perhaps a picture he came across in a book," said Innes, taking the pad and the glass from Stern.
"What sort of dream, Jack?" asked Doyle, trying to keep him focused.
Sparks stared grimly at the drawing, then spoke softly, as if confessing something to Doyle. "I had the dream first three months ago. Keeps coming back, with greater intensity, always the same. This black tower. A white desert. Something underground. A phrase repeating over and over again in my mind. We are Six."
"Six? You mean—"
"Yes."
"Like the number Stern drew on the pad..."
"Yes."
"Who's Brachman?" asked Innes.
"Brachman? Where did you see that?" asked Stern.
"Written here, very small letters, on the edge of this drawing," said Innes, pointing to the pad with the glass.
"Isaac Brachman is a colleague of my father's, a rabbi at a temple in Chicago____"
"And a scholar of the Zohar?"
"One of the most learned. I may have mentioned him to you on the ship, if not by name. We obtained the Tikkunei Zohar, the addendum to the Zohar, for him to study. Rabbi Brachman was a principal organizer of the Parliament of Religions last year at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago."
"Did your father attend that convention?" asked Doyle.
"He (id; every major religion in the world was represented.... "
"When was the last time you spoke to Rabbi Brachman?"
"I don't recall; weeks